College
by Bowles
Summary: Kitty's gone off to college in Chicago. Lance claims he's all right, but no one believes him. Luckily for him, Pietro's signed the two of them up for a dangerous S.H.I.E.L.D. mission in the Windy City to help him take his mind off things. Lancitty
1. My Job Offer

This fic has been in the works for about a year now and I'm finally posting it. It takes place about a year after the end of the series (by my estimation) and you can expect several things from it: some Lancitty tension, some fun with Pietro, and a story that's somewhere between a buddy fic and a romance.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evo or any associated characters, bla bla bla.

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_One: My Job Offer_

"No, _you _get up here and try to tell these morons what to do. I'm nobody's errand boy, Fury. I've told you thirty times that you can't expect us to come running down to Washington every time you've got an itch on your ass you're having trouble scratching. We're tired and, in Pyro's case, sick and hung over. We just got back from one kamikaze mission. The least you can do is get your ass up here to debrief us."

Pietro shuffled a deck of cards for the seventh time that afternoon. "Having trouble with the boss?"

Lance nodded as Fury launched into a string of swear words. There seemed to be a threat hidden somewhere amongst the profanity, although it was hard to tell. Lance was able to pick out "large metal pole," "comatose," and "barrel of inbred monkeys," although he was unsure how they were supposed to go together.

"Gimme the phone." Pietro didn't wait for him to oblige, instead taking it by force. "It's Quicksilver. Listen here, Fury. We're tired. Pyro just got done puking his guts out, and to be honest, I don't even know where Fred went. Wanda's been complaining about some womanly problem all day. I think it's that time of the month. You really want to piss her off?"

Lance shook his head and headed out of the kitchen, grabbing a half-full carton of milk as he went. Todd was the only other person in the living room, and he was busy watching some cheesy romance flick on TV. Lance had long since learned not to question Todd about this odd habit. The last time he had, Todd had ended up naked on the roof and Wanda had hexed her way out of the house. He couldn't even remember how that happened.

"Of course we're getting short with you, moron. Did you not hear the 'tired and hung over' part?" Lance took a gulp of the milk as he listened to Pietro sigh. "Well, yeah. For Chrissake, Fury, he's been moping for the past three months. You're just noticing now?"

Lance's grip on the carton tightened. Not again.

"No, it's not her at all. He's actually pining after some hooker we picked up in New York during that run-in with Spidey and co." He could hear Fury's tinny shouting through the receiver. "Jeez, stop yelling! It's just sarcasm. But all jokes aside, boss, we're beat. We've had four assignments inside of a week, and at some point or another each of us has nearly lost a limb. You get up here and tell us to our faces that you want us to go risk our lives again for our weekly wage, which, by the way, is pretty pathetic for the work we're doing and honestly, I'd feel a little more secure if it wasn't on a contingent basis."

The heroine of the chick flick broke out into song. Todd leaned forward in his perch on the sofa.

"Good. I told you we could work something out. See you later, boss." Lance felt Pietro walk up behind him. "He's coming here to debrief us."

"Yay."

"I swear, if it's another containment mission, I might just quit."

"No you won't. The pay's crap, but it's not like a high school dropout can find any other decent job, and Fury's got so much dirt on us he could have us in jail before our two weeks' notice is even up."

"Ah, but that's the beauty of amnesty!" Pietro exclaimed, grinning. "I bet Fury's already regretting that."

Lance rolled his eyes. "No doubt."

- -

-

- -

REWRITE/EDIT?

Kitty groaned as her roommate squealed and giggled on the bunk above her. Another late night conversation with the boyfriend. Either he was Prince Charming or the roommate was just really ditzy. Kitty leaned toward the latter.

She knew that Rogue would be laughing if she could hear her now, but Kitty hadn't been _that_ bad. Sure, she'd stayed up and talked to Lance until two in the morning sometimes, and yes, she'd giggled, but she hadn't squealed. Lance was great and all, but no guy would ever make her squeal.

Ugh. Lance.

She pushed that uncomfortable subject from her mind. It had been three months and it still got to her. Maybe Rogue had a point.

Kitty rolled over to look at the clock and groaned again when she saw the time. She was already running late for her philosophy class. Muttering to herself, she sat up and began groping about for her shoes, doing her best to ignore her roommate and her own strayed thoughts.

- -

-

- -

"Tolansky! I said no onions!"

"Sorry, Bossman."

Fury watched as Todd hopped back into the kitchen. He then turned away to face the others. He didn't see Todd spit in his sandwich as he removed the offending vegetables.

"Stop diddling, Fury," Pyro growled. He banged his head against the table lightly and swore. Each rap on the wood was another hidden message: _I don't want to be here. I hate you. I think I'm going to throw up._ "I could be in bed right now, you know."

"Aw. Poor you." Fury extended his hand and took the plate as Todd handed it back to him. "If you're going to make me come here to debrief you, then I'm sure as hell going to be comfortable doing it." He took a bite out of the sandwich, chewed for a moment, and then nodded, satisfied. Now he turned his attention to the peeling wallpaper and the stains on the sofas. "This place looks like a dump. What do you lot do with your paycheck? Really. There's rats and flies and –"

"Fury, shut up and get on with it," Wanda growled. Her eyes flashed, and Fury's mouth hung limp, chewed sandwich in plain sight. "I'm starting to get a little irritated."

Fury shut his mouth and swallowed his food. "You're right. Well. Now that we're all here, let's get down to business. First off, I've got two missions for you."

This was greeted with a large uproar. Pietro rattled off a long diatribe in the space of a breath; Todd nearly hopped up to the broken chandelier during his own protesting; Fred took Fury's sandwich and began waving it at him in a threatening manner before deciding that he was hungry and stopping; Pyro groaned into the table and banged his foot into the floor; and a vase near Wanda shattered. Lance just sat back and watched it all. He had already grown accustomed to the demands of S.H.I.E.L.D. The extra mission was hardly a surprise.

"Now, everyone just settle down a second, and Dukes, _give me back my sandwich._" Fred recognized the danger in Fury's tone and obliged. "There we go. Before you throw me out of this little dump you call a house, let me explain. There are two missions, but each person will only be taking part in one. We're splitting up the team, in other words."

"Oh," said Todd, hanging from the chandelier. "Well, that's a little better."

"Not much, though," Pietro added.

"I know, I know. But would you shut up for a second so I can explain the missions?" Fury took a bite of his sandwich. "Good grub, Tolensky."

Lance grinned as Todd saluted the commander. "No prob, Bossman."

"Anyways. As I was saying. Our first mission is in Washington, which is one of the reasons I wanted you all to come down there. You might have heard of a man named Grayson Creed."

Pyro looked up. "You got my attention."

"I thought that would do it." There was a pause as Fury considered his sandwich (or, more likely, how to phrase his next sentence). "This weekend a convention will be held, and Creed will be attending. The FBI's received a tip that an attempt will be made on Creed's life, and naturally they turned to us." He set down the sandwich. "I need you to protect Grayson Creed for a weekend and find out who's trying to kill him."

"You're kidding," Pyro deadpanned.

"There's no mystery who's trying to kill him," muttered Wanda to herself, and Lance agreed with her. "The guy's going on and on about ending the mutant threat. Did you hear that the Friends of Humanity nearly killed that mutant girl in Alabama? Every sane person with an X gene wants him dead."

"Yeah," said Fred, "why should we protect him?"

"Because we've got a legal obligation to protect him, that's why," Fury replied. He was in Serious Kickass Boss mode now. "No matter what you think of the guy, how do you think it's going to look if some mutant extremist goes along and kills him? The Friends of Humanity will just rally along and decry mutants for all they're worth. That's obviously a bit of a dilemma for us, as the higher-ups are going to be under severe pressure to can this whole Freedom Force mutant outfit. Basically, boys, you'll be out of a job if Creed's killed."

Pietro crossed his arms in a childish pout. "Well that sucks. What about the other mission?"

"Not nearly as exciting," said Fury. "There's an operation in Chicago called the Hellfire Club. A bunch of rich aristocrats, basically, but we've received word that something else may be going on there. We want a couple of you to try to infiltrate and find out what you can to see if any further investigation will need to be made. It won't be much – just an intel-gathering mission, but it's crucial nonetheless."

Lance saw it before it happened. He opened his mouth to stop it, but it was too late.

"Me and Lance'll take it," Pietro responded before anyone else could even think it over. He glanced at Lance, and Lance mouthed several choice words at him. The last thing he needed was a trip to the Second City.

"That was quick. All right. Two should be fine." Fury leaned forward and placed his plate on the table. "So we've got Toad, Blob, Pyro, and the Scarlet Witch on the Creed case. That's an… interesting team. I'll send escorts in a few hours to pick you up, and I'll give you further instructions at that time."

Todd jumped own from the chandelier and picked up Fury's plate, waving it at him for emphasis. "That's it? We're leaving in a few hours? That's harsh."

"Unfortunately would-be assassins tend not to wait until it's most convenient for us to stop them." Fury nodded to the entire team. "Well, it's been a good visit. I'll be in contact. Start packing."

No one said goodbye when he walked to the door and exited the house. Pietro sped over to the window and watched as Fury's van took off down the road. "This'll be fun."

"Yeah, real fun," Pyro muttered. He shakily stood up and began lumbering back to the stairs. "I'm going to bed. Wake me up when it's time to go."

"And I gotta go pack," Todd said, hopping in the direction of Pyro. "Yo, Fred, I think some of my socks are in your room. You were using them for that slingshot or whatever."

Fred chuckled and hobbled after Todd. "Oh, yeah."

Wanda said nothing. She glared at the remaining few teammates for a couple of seconds before storming out the back door.

"All right," Lance growled as he turned to Pietro, now sure that they were alone, "what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I haven't the faintest what you mean, my dear Lance!" Pietro exclaimed, doing his best to look oblivious.

"You know damn well what I mean!" Lance took a step forward and leaned against the cabinet, pinning Pietro into the corner with his presence. All of a sudden he felt like a bully back in Northbrook again. Good times. "Chicago. I'm not stupid."

"It'll be an easy mission. Just intel."

"That doesn't explain why you volunteered me."

Pietro closed the curtains and threw himself into a chair. "Oh, all right. You got me. So I had other reasons. Big deal."

"Pietro, I don't want to go to Chicago," Lance stated. "You know why."

"Yeah, yeah." Pietro placed his feet on top of the table and relaxed in his chair. "It's been three months, man. You haven't gotten over her yet. You're a mess."

"I'm not a _mess._"

"Yes you are. We can all tell, Lance. You've been all depressed and whatever ever since she left for college." Pietro sighed. "The way I see it, there's only two possibilities: either you're going to get over her eventually or you aren't. I figure if we stop waiting back and bring the fight to her – well, maybe we'll speed things up a little bit, and you know time is money. So, we go to Chicago, you either find out that you really don't need her, or you find out that you do so you do something about it. It's a win-win situation."

"I'm doing fine without you," grunted Lance. "I don't need your help."

For a second it looked like Pietro was going to argue but he closed his mouth and just shook his head. "Sure. Whatever you say. There's no time to argue now, though. We've got a job to do, whether you like it or not. Pack up."

In a blur Pietro was gone, the chair rattling back into place. Lance stared out the window for a moment before turning and walking back to the living room, trying to remember if he'd unpacked his bags from the last mission and silently cursing Pietro Maximoff's name.

-


	2. My Fake Accent

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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_Two: My Fake Accent_

Lance hated planes.

It wasn't that they flew so high above the ground. It wasn't claustrophobia, as he'd heard some people explain.

It was the speed.

He was no genius, but did they really have to go so fast to stay up in the air? Back in the day (the day in this case meaning "when black-and-white TVs were still commonplace") had they really needed to go six hundred miles an hour? Or was that some new innovation? In modern times, he decided, people were in too much of a hurry. If people would just stop for a second and enjoy life, then maybe the airlines could scale it back a little. Just a bit. Oh, say, to three hundred? Two hundred, maybe?

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't just the speed. He _did_ feel a little claustrophobic in the cramped four-passenger government-issue jet, and it _was_ a little disconcerting to look out the window and see nothing but clouds.

The only way it could get any worse was if there was turbulence.

"We're reaching a rough patch," the pilot announced in his seat in front of them just as Lance thought this. "Buckle your seatbelt and hold on to your lunch, boys."

Sometimes Lance hated life. And apparently vice versa.

-

It turned out that he didn't throw up, which was in itself completely shocking. Pietro was pretty smug about his airsickness, but that was anything _but _shocking.

Pietro was still going on about something or other when they packed their bags into the cab. The driver was less than helpful, but it didn't matter much, as they'd long since learned to travel light. They sat down in the back seat and the driver turned on the car. Lance just rested his head against the window and watched the city skyline as they lurched forwards. His rest was interrupted by an all-too familiar beeping noise.

"Who're you calling?" he asked, not even needing to turn to see that Pietro was calling someone. The speedster had turned into a cell phone addict.

"No one, just an old friend from way back when. Don't worry your gruff little head about it." Lance could hear it ringing on the other end. Pietro's phone had always been loud. "Lalala… oh? Hello?"

Deciding that there would be nothing of further interest to him in the conversation, Lance closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep.

Emphasis on "tried."

"Yeah, hey, Kit, it's Pietro." Lance's eyes shot open. He twisted over to stare his (stupid, idiotic, clinically insane) friend in the eyes and perhaps get in better position to throttle him. "Oh, not much, just the usual. Anywho, I was just calling because I'm in town and just thought I'd say hi. What? Well, technically I probably shouldn't be too specific, but we're in town for work. No, the whole team's not here, just a couple of us."

Lance sat straight up. He began mouthing, _"No, no no!" _to Pietro, but he was just hushed. "Oh it's just me and La-" Pietro wheezed as he was punched in the arm "– Todd." Lance shook his head and waved his hands side-to-side; Kitty actually _liked_ Todd, except for the smell and all. "Did I say Todd? I meant Pyro."

Lance nodded. Pyro scared Kitty senseless, as she thought he was completely mad (and she was right, too).

"What're you talking about? I'm not lying." Oh Jesus. Lance put his head in his hands and moaned. "You know I'd never lie to you, Kat. Could I ever lie?"

"Yes," snorted Lance, but Pietro paid him no mind.

"Well, I _would_ put Lance on the phone with you, but I'm with Pyro, so I can't." Pietro waved his hand in the air in surrender, seemingly unaware that Kitty couldn't see him. "Fine, Kitty, I'll put _Pyro_ on the phone."

He handed Lance the phone. Lance took it and promptly ended the call.

"What'd you do that for?" Pietro asked, offended.

"I'm not talking to her as me, and I'm not trying to fake an Aussie accent to talk to her as Pyro." The phone vibrated in his hand and he offered it to Pietro. "She's calling again. You can take it."

Pietro held it up to his ear. "Helloooooo? Oh yeah, sorry, Pyro's not really feeling very talkative. Yeah, you know, he's hung over." Lance resisted the urge to strangle Pietro, because in all honesty, it _was_ true. "Tell him something? Sure can do. Talk away."

There was a pause as Kitty delivered the message. Lance bored of waiting and began writing on the window with his fingertip.

"All right, let me tell him." Pietro set the phone against his shoulder and looked at Lance. "Kitty says you – and by you I mean Pyro – need to stop avoiding her, and that she wants to talk to you whenever you've stopped throwing a tantrum."

"I'm not avoiding her," grunted Lance.

"He's not avoiding you," Pietro babbled into the phone. "Why would he have any reason to avoid you? Pyro doesn't care if you went off to college. Pyro's insane, aren't you Pyro?"

"Yes!" Lance said very loudly and in a poor imitation of St. John's accent.

Kitty was obviously saying something on the other end, and from Pietro's expression she wasn't happy. "Oh, of course it's Pyro. You know how bad Lance is with accents. Oh, gotta go. Job stuff. Yes, yes, I'll call you later." Lance had the impression that Kitty was swearing or threatening Pietro now. "Yeah, love you too, Kit. Buh bye."

Pietro hung up and placed his phone in his pocket. "You know, Lance, I think you two have some unresolved issues."

"No, really?" Lance muttered.

The cab ground to a screeching halt. "We're here," announced the driver unnecessarily.

Probably the best part about this entire mission was the hotel. S.H.I.E.L.D. may have screwed over their employees in a lot of ways, but they didn't skimp out on the rooming accommodations. Only the finest for the men (and woman) with the most dangerous jobs in America.

It took them a while to get checked in and get their things upstairs, but as soon as they were in their room they both threw their things down and flopped down on their queen-sized beds.

"Ah, my legs are sore from sitting down so long," Lance moaned as he relaxed his head into his pillow. "Need to stretch them out a bit."

"There aren't any chocolates on the pillows," Pietro stated, none too pleased. "What kind of crap motel is this?"

Lance was about to reply when he felt his pocket vibrating. He grumbled and reached into it and pulled out his phone. It was ringing, and it had gotten out, _"It's more than a feeling (more than a feeling) –"_ before he shut it, red-faced. He really needed to change that ring tone.

"I thought Nirvana was your ring tone," Pietro said, amused. "Unless… Kitty was calling?"

"Shut up. I need to change the ring tone." He tossed the phone down beside him on the bed. "And I'll call her later."

He had just closed his eyes when Pietro's voice rung out again. "She texted me. She says you're dead if you don't pick up your phone next time she calls."

"Oh no."

"I'll text her and tell her you said that." He could hear Pietro tapping away at the phone's keys. "By the way, what ring tone do you have when I call? The James Bond theme? Something equally classy?"

Lance grinned. "I think I've got Shania Twain for you."

Pietro was spared from responding when Lance's phone began buzzing on the bed. _"Everybody's working for the weekend!"_ Lance fumbled about for it, bringing it up to his ear and speaking.

"Yeah, boss?" he said.

"Alvers." Even on the phone Fury was intimidating. "Just calling to let you know an operative will be up to your room to debrief you soon. Password: spamalot."

"Okay, but –"

Fury had already hung up. He didn't waste time beating around the bush.

"Fury's sending up an operative," Lance said as he put his phone away. "She's going to tell us what's what and all that shit. Password's 'spamalot.' Stupid password."

"Almost as bad as back in New York when Richards's codeword was 'Dumbledore,'" Pietro agreed, but he wasn't even looking at Lance. He was busy tapping away on his phone, no doubt texting (texting, funnily enough, was one of the few things Pietro was unable to do at superspeed – it annoyed him to no end).

"Who're you texting?" asked Lance, already knowing the answer.

"No one."

"No angry ex-girlfriends?"

Pietro was unapologetic. "None of mine, at least. Possibly someone else's."

"You know what? Whatever. Let's just watch TV." Lance grabbed the remote and pressed the power button. With a fuzzy sound the TV burst to life, spouting jazzy music and the text on the screen boasting about the hotel's wonderful selection of channels. "What do you want to watch?"

"I dunno." Pietro frowned. "All the shows are just so _slow._ I mean, they take so long to develop their plot and stuff."

Lance mumbled under his breath, "Surprise surprise. Fine. Let's just watch a show with no plot. Then you can't bitch and moan about it."

Naturally, they ended up watching a _Seinfeld_ rerun. They were only five minutes in – "I'm a man who respects a good coma," Jerry was saying – when there came a knock on the door.

"Couldn't they at least call us first?" Pietro bemoaned, and then he was at the door, peering through the peephole. "Whoa. They sent a hot babe up to debrief us. I wish I meant that in the way that Todd'd twist it."

"These doors aren't soundproof," said someone from outside. Lance had to admit, even her voice sounded attractive. "I assume you're Quicksilver."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Pietro always got childish when he was around attractive women. Lance had no clue why. Overcompensating, probably. "But you won't get in without a password."

"Fine. Spamalot."

Pietro threw open the door and in walked the second-most beautiful woman Lance had ever seen. She had dark, curly hair that fell below her shoulders, a tall, voluptuous frame designed to make men salivate, and stylish glasses that hinted at her own intellectual assurance and self-confidence. She dressed classily, but she was also fashionable. Her lips were red and moist, and her eyes were greener than Lance had thought previously possible.

She couldn't hold a candle to Kitty. But she came closer than most.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," she greeted them. Pietro offered her his bed as a seat, but she declined, and he hurried to pull up a chair, which she graciously accepted. "Thank you. Now, as you know, Fury sent me to tell you more about your mission."

"God bless Fury," Pietro grunted. The woman, to Lance's shock, smiled.

"I'll take that as a compliment, Maximoff." She crossed her legs and placed her briefcase in her lap. "My name is Jessica Drew, and I'm a member of an organization affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. I've been investigating this Hellfire Club, and while others say that it's no serious threat, I think there's something more sinister going on behind closed doors."

"I got that feeling, too," Pietro concurred.

"Splendid, Maximoff. I knew we'd get along," she purred, and Lance knew she was just toying with Pietro. Hell, Pietro probably knew it too, but at the moment he just didn't care. "Your job is to infiltrate the Hellfire Club. Now, we thought originally of portraying you as two trust-fund progenies, but Fury doubted that you'd be able to pull off that kind of sophisticated snobbery. Also, it's come to our attention that they may recognize you from your previous… escapades. Naturally, we had to come up with an alternative."

She opened the briefcase and withdrew two watches. Handing one to each, she continued, "These are image inducers. I believe your friend Kurt Wagner used to employ one quite regularly."

"Sweet!" Pietro laughed, holding his image inducer up in the light to better inspect it. "I've always wanted to be a six five, jacked Austrian bodybuilder!"

"The disguise are preprogrammed," Drew informed him, and he pouted. "The technology is far from perfect, and it's best if we stick close to your natural features. That worked well for Wagner, and I've heard stories of your cohort Tolensky trying to use it and nearly breaking Wagner's device. In case they become suspicious, there's a backup disguise as well. You know your aliases."

"Bruce Kent," Lance said, distracted by the new toy.

"Clark Wayne," Pietro replied with even less enthusiasm.

"Right. You are both applying for waiter jobs at the club's exclusive restaurant." Drew handed them each several papers. "There are further details in the file. We have arranged it so that you will be hired. While inside, we wish for you to listen in on discussions of any of the higher-ups. Again, they are detailed in the file. We are primarily interested in Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and one Donald Pierce. Included in your inducers are tape recorders. They're digital and relay information straight to our mainframe, so don't worry about your memory running out. You should also write down anything of note and contact us with your findings. My e-mail's in the file. The jack in this room is secure, but I can't promise you anything if you go wireless."

"Right," said Lance. "Record their conversations. Do want us snooping around?"

"Only if you find some information that deems it necessary," responded the lady. "However, before you go adventuring, tell us what you found. It doesn't do us any good if you get killed before you report your findings."

Lance remembered the waiver he'd signed before his first mission. When he got home he was writing a will, he decided. "Gee, thanks for the support."

"I've got ten operatives in Kevlar waiting to knock down the doors of the Club if we need to rescue you," she said tartly. "We're supporting you plenty. I assume you both have your guns?"

"Yeah," Pietro said, distasteful tone in his voice. "Useless things. So Neanderthal."

"Incredibly effective as well," Drew retorted. "They just might save your life. Keep them on you, and keep them concealed. We imagine they'll have metal detectors at the gate, but you're Quicksilver. I'm sure you'll find a way around that."

Pietro grinned. "Well, when you put it that way…"

"Of course." She closed her briefcase. "If you get in trouble, call me. I'll dispatch my men, and if I'm not currently disposed I myself will come to your aid."

"Don't worry, beautiful," Pietro said, making Lance want to hurl all over again. "We've got this covered. You just sit in your office and look pretty for us."

Drew just grinned. "Go ahead, underestimate me, Maximoff. I love it when men do that. Just because I haven't bragged about my hand doesn't mean that I don't have a royal flush."

"I'll pretend I know what you mean," replied the silver-haired boy. He waggled his eyebrows. "Lucky for you I kinda like strong, intelligent women."

Lance tried not to scoff. The only girls Pietro liked were the only ones that could be tricked into going out with him: giggly bimbos with a head full of air and cobwebs. Useless, like so much mutton.

"As much as I'm loving this, I've got to go. You can flirt with me later, Maximoff."

Drew uncrossed her legs and stood. Pietro was already at the door, holding it open for her.

"It's been a pleasure, Ms. Drew – or can I call you Jessica?" he asked.

She pursed her lips. "Ms. Drew is fine."

"No worries, we'll work on that," he said, flashing her a grin. "As I was saying, it's been a pleasure. If there's anything you need, you know where we are. Don't be a stranger."

"I'll try to remember that," she remarked as she walked out the door. She looked back at Pietro and then at Lance. "Alvers, I can already tell there are going to be major issues with you two. Attempt to keep Maximoff from doing anything incredibly stupid, won't you?"

Lance laughed. "Don't worry, I'll try. I'm not saying it'll do any good, but I'll try to keep him in line."

"Lance is one to talk," Pietro replied. "If a customer in the restaurant pisses him off he'll do his thing and bring the roof down on our heads."

"Well, I suppose you'll have to look after each other." She nodded and adjusted her glasses. "On a serious note, call if there's any trouble. You've got my number."

"Will do. Adios. Don't worry about us. We're professionals."

Lance had to credit her; she kept her expression neutral. She didn't look back as she began walking away, and Pietro stuck his head out of the door to wave at her as she went. Leaning back inside, he sighed. "Wow. What a girl. I knew there was a reason we came to Chicago."

"Besides annoying me, you mean."

"Besides saving your ass, I mean," Pietro clarified.

Lance sat back in the bed and turned to the TV, which he'd placed on mute while Drew had visited them. "Whatever."

He was just about to turn the volume back up when there was another knock at the door. He glanced at Pietro, but his face was unreadable.

"Room service?" Pietro offered.

"Somehow I doubt it," Lance said. "Open it."

Pietro just sat down. "Nah. Maybe if we ignore them they'll go away."

Whoever it was, they knocked again. Grumbling under his breath, Lance threw himself off the bed and got up to go to the door. "All right already, I'm coming."

He reached out for the handle and pulled. It occurred to him a split-second too late that he should have checked the peephole, but he'd always been a bit reckless. Sometimes it came back to bite him. Sometimes more often became most of the time.

"Lance."

Lance swallowed the lump in his throat. "Hello, Kitty."

-


	3. My Attitude Problem

Sorry this took so long. Hopefully that delay won't occur again.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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_My Attitude Problem_

Kitty received Pietro's text with the hotel name shortly after she initially texted him. A quick check on Google and she was grabbing her shoes, ready to head out the door. If Lance wasn't willing to talk to her, then she would just have to force him.

"Going somewhere, Catty?" her roommate, Alison, asked. Kitty was too busy being shocked that Alison was off the phone to be irritated about the foolish nickname.

"Actually, yes," Kitty replied. "Some friends are in town. I'm going to visit them at their hotel. I'll be out for a while."

Alison was not especially saddened. "Sucks for you. You'll miss Grey's."

"Oh well, it's a repeat anyways." Kitty's sneakers squeaked against the tiled floor as she stomped towards the door. "See you later."

"I'll tell you all about the eppie when you get back!" Alison called.

The hall was relatively uncluttered for the time of day, and Kitty moved swiftly to the stairwell. She was grateful for the lack of company; she didn't need to hear anyone whispering about her as she walked by their door. If there was one good thing about Alison, it was her attitude towards mutants, or lack thereof. Kitty'd gone through three roommates before Alison, who couldn't care less about mutants or Shadowcat or X-Men. Although that might have been because she didn't understand any of those concepts.

She flew down the stairs and stole away towards the door and outside. The sun was beginning to set, and a cool breeze reminded her that she'd forgotten her jacket inside. It was too late to go back and get it now, so she wrapped her arms around herself and headed for the street. The hotel was only a few blocks away from the edge of campus (and her dorm).

It took her longer than she'd expected to get to the hotel. There were several reasons for this: idiotic drivers (she imagined Scott scoffing at her hypocrisy), broken traffic lights, and in one instance, a pickpocket who'd nearly run right through her while making his getaway. He was foiled by a simple extension of her leg, though, and she left him with his face in the pavement as a police officer hurried over.

She knew the hotel and had seen it before on her occasional romps around the city, but as she approached the building it hit her for the first time just how over-the-top it was. It was five star – easily – and a number of bellboys were lounging about just inside the glass doorways. Kitty waved them away when they came to help her, and she accepted the automatic doors' invitation to come inside.

The inside of the hotel was equally swanky. If there was one drawback, it was that the place was packed: there was even a line at the elevator. She considered taking the stairs, but really she didn't mind waiting for a little while, so she got in line and did just that.

The elevators were also made of glass, and as they went up it was possible to look out over the entrance area and the restaurants and tropical foliage (safely protected from the Chicago weather) within. The ride up took a while, as the boys were on the ninth floor and passengers got off or on at each floor. Eventually the top screen flashed a 9 and Kitty exited the elevator. Now it was just a matter of finding their room.

Not only was the hotel ridiculously nice, she soon discovered – it was also ridiculously large. She spent what seemed like forever walking around the perimeter of the big square formed by the hallway above the lobby. It was ironic, really, that three years after that meeting at town hall (_nothing but a hood/never be good enough for you_) she'd be the one living in a dumpy one-room dorm and that Lance would be the one staying in the finest hotel money could buy.

Kitty's thoughts were cut off when she nearly ran into someone. Stumbling backwards, she looked up to the person, hoping she hadn't accidentally phased. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

"Oh, don't worry," said a very beautiful brunette with an equally beautiful smile. She brushed off her skirt, stared at Kitty. She smiled, almost. "I wasn't paying attention. Sorry."

"It's okay." Kitty stepped aside and allowed the woman to pass her. She didn't bother watching her walk away, as it seemed enough people were already staring at the woman. She instead looked up at the nearest door number, finding that she was only a few digits away from the boys' room.

She took several long strides and stopped in front of the respective room number. She took several breaths, trying to forget how long it had been since she'd had a proper talk with Lance, and knocked her knuckles against the waxed wood of the door.

No one answered. She could hear people talking inside, so she waited a second or two before knocking again.

She wasn't kept idle. This time someone answered.

"Lance," she said, trying to keep her voice even.

"Hello, Kitty," said Lance. She could tell he was surprised, but his off-guard approach didn't stop her from noticing that he looked just the same as he had when they'd last seen each other, although more handsome in a mature kind of way, if at all possible.

"So are you going to invite me in, or…?"

He took an awkward step back and beckoned for her to enter. "Yeah, yeah, come on in. What's mine is yours. All that stuff."

Kitty accepted his invitation before he had a chance to think better of it, and he closed the door behind her. Pietro was sitting down in a chair near the door, and she could see that they'd already thrown their things on their large beds, although it didn't appear that they'd unpacked yet. Typical boys.

"Hey, Pretty Kitty," Pietro greeted her. He frowned and tilted his head towards Lance. A cat, leering at its brother. "Don't worry, I know that's your line."

"It's not –" Lance tried to explain but decided he couldn't and just followed Kitty further into the room. "Uh, you can sit down on my bed if you want. I mean, I don't want you to – I'm saying that there isn't another chair to sit in – not that I want you to be in the bed – oh hell, you know what I mean."

"Yeah. Thanks." Kitty lowered herself onto the bed. It was tall, and her feet dangled a few inches off the ground. "So."

"Yeah." Her Lance, ever the conversationalist.

"Oh, come on," Pietro huffed, foot tapping against the carpet. It was clear he was already getting bored with the pace of things. "You came to talk, right, Kitty? So talk. Talk, talk, talk. Talk!"

"Settle down, I get it," Kitty said. "I'll talk."

"I hate to say this, but you probably shouldn't be here right now," said Lance. When Kitty looked at him he turned his face away from her and tried to cover his eyes by scratching his forehead. "We've got a job to do, and you shouldn't even know that we're here. We need to rest up and concentrate on the task at hand."

Kitty wasn't sure what to say. Luckily for her, Pietro was already on the job. "Shut up, Lance. We just had someone in here two minutes ago, and she just left. You weren't complaining when she was in here."

"Was that the brunette I saw walking down the hall?" asked Kitty. An unwelcome pang of jealousy was rising up in her, and it was not easily quelled.

"The bombshell?" Pietro nodded. "Yeah."

"She's not a bombshell," Lance muttered. He turned red as Kitty turned her gaze to him. "She's pretty and all, but she's not as amazing as you keep making her out to be. You were drooling all over the floor."

The unwelcome feeling faded, albeit not completely. She still didn't like the idea of that woman sitting in the room, alone with the two.

"So, we're agreed. It's time to talk." They said nothing for a while, and Pietro huffed again, stood, and placed his hands on his hips. "Do I have to do everything around here? Talk!"

There was a hitch in Kitty's voice as she spoke to him. "Pietro…"

"What?" he asked in an offended tone.

"Pietro," Lance said. His eyes flitted to the door for a split-second, but Pietro never needed more than a blink of an eye to make a decision.

The speedster placed one of his hands on his neck in an uneasy fashion. "Oh. Um. Yeah. I think I should probably go get a soda from the vending machines. I'm really thirsty all of a sudden. I'll catch you losers later."

An uneasy breath; Pietro was gone. Kitty was surprised: he'd even bothered to close the door behind him.

"Hyperactive lunatic," remarked Lance.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Very."

"I don't know how I'll get a good night's sleep on this trip. He wakes everyone else up when he does. I guess he gets bored or something."

"I bet. He pretty much lives at superspeed, so waiting for even fifteen minutes must seem like a lifetime."

"Probably." He coughed. "Sorry. Dry throat. I should've asked Pietro to get me a drink."

"Me too. I'm totally parched."

Kitty internally groaned. In retrospect, she'd never really had any sort of plan at all. It was just Lance, she'd thought. It'd never been hard to talk to him before, even when they were fighting (_especially_ when they were fighting – they tended to talk a lot during their spats). Why would it be any different now?

Lance stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried to be casual. "Not that I don't love small talk, but I kind of got the idea you didn't come here to talk to me about sodas."

"You're right." She sighed. She hated it when people sighed, including herself. That always meant that something bad was coming. And even when it was a sigh of relief, it meant that something bad could've possibly been coming. "We need to talk."

"I'd gotten that already. I figured that's what you meant by barging in here and just kind of forced Pietro out of the room."

"I didn't force him out of the room! That was you!"

"Fair point," he admitted. "Okay, so maybe that was too harsh. But like you said. Let's talk. What do you want to talk about?"

She placed her hands under her bottom to prevent herself from waving them around too much. During a presentation in one of her classes she'd discovered she had a tendency to do that. "I don't know… I'm just frustrated. I guess we didn't end like we probably could have, and I know you were frustrated – I was frustrated, too – but you didn't have to, like, completely shut me out or anything. You never answer any of my calls or e-mails or texts, and if you do, it's always just a short 'yes' or 'no' or 'maybe.' It's irritating."

"Uh huh," was his reply.

"That's it? 'Uh huh?'"

"I don't know. What do you want from me? An apology?" He snorted. "You know I hate saying I'm sorry, especially if I don't know what I'm saying sorry for. I don't get why it matters if I return your calls. I don't even know why you're making a big deal about this. We're over, done, kapoot. I didn't think you'd mind if I kept in touch with you or not."

"Oh, yeah, I guess just because I decided to go to college means I don't care about you at all and like, totally hate you," she spat. Whenever she got angry she slipped more and more back into her old valley girl accent. "You're right. Let's just not talk any more. I'm sorry for trying."

"It's not because you went to college," Lance said, uncharacteristically quiet. "You know that. After all, _you_ were the one to break it off."

"Because I didn't want to have a relationship with someone a thousand miles away. Yeah, excuse me."

His hair hung low so that she couldn't see his eyes. "I'm not blaming you or whatever. I'm just saying that I'm trying to… get over you. It's hard to do that when I hear your voice every day."

"And you think it's any easier for me?" she challenged.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, words strained as he recognized the figurative gauntlet at his feet. "You were the one who ended it. Of course it's easier for you. You think I wouldn't have drove out here every weekend to see you? I would've even stopped in Northbrook to say hi to your old man if you wanted me to."

"But that's not fair to you!" replied Kitty (_nothing's fair anymore_, she realized). "It's not worth it to go through that, Lance. Relationships are supposed to be fun."

He grunted. After a few seconds she decided that was all she was going to get from him and she stood. "Maybe I should go."

"Maybe," Lance concurred. "Go if you want to. I'm not stopping you."

"Fine." She pushed past him and to the door, lingering a moment to size him up one last time. "Don't worry. I won't waste my time calling you any more. I know it's such a pain in the ass for you."

He just stood there with that expression she'd seen so many times before. If she hadn't been so angry and worked up, Kitty would've walked up to him and hugged him. But somehow she didn't think that fit in with this situation.

She forced herself to look away from him and to open the door and walk on out. As it shut behind her, her eyes began to sting, and she brushed each one with the back of her hand.

"Kitty Cat," came Pietro's voice from her side. He stopped, drink in hand, when he saw her face. "Uh oh. Not go so good?"

"Has he always been such a jerk?" she asked.

"Yeah, guess you just now noticed. I just thought you liked that about him. Said he had attitude, and that was a good thing."

"I did," she remarked, almost hiccupping for a moment, "but the fights are just… You know what? I don't care. If he wants to be an idiot that's his problem."

A grin spread across Pietro's face. "You tell 'im, Pryde. I'll see what's going on with Lance after he's cooled down." She wanted to tell Pietro to be careful but it would've been no use. "He'll probably be moaning about how he's ruined things and all that."

"I doubt it." Kitty sniffed once. "Thanks anyways, though. I've got to get back to my dorm. Call me later, okay?"

"Okay," he said.

She left him there with his soda bottle and began the walk to the elevator. No matter how she tried, Lance kept pushing himself into her head. If things kept up like this, she'd need Professor Xavier to help her forget about that jerk.

_Way to go, X-Man,_ she thought as the elevator opened before her. _You've faced monsters and aliens and lunatics and murderers and you're undone by a cute Cobain wannabe. What'll it be next?_

_-  
_


	4. My Interview with the Vampire

Sorry for the huge delay. I'll try to get the next few chapters edited and out quicker.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evolution or any associated properties.

* * *

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_My Interview with the Vampire_

"Good going, Rockhead," Pietro announced as soon as he stepped foot inside the room. Lance didn't look up from the show about nothing. "You blew that."

"Not my fault," grunted Lance. George and Elaine were arguing about birth control while Kramer did his usual comedic schtick. "She can call me up when she gets off the rag."

"Yes, I can see the sparkling cheerfulness Kitty fell in love with," remarked the other mutant as he sat down on one of the dressers. "But I mean it. You really blew it. Badly. I've seen how you can mess things up before, but that's a new low, even for you. Really you should be proud of yourself. You're setting new standards of incompetence, buddy."

Lance considered using his powers to knock his counterpart off the dresser but decided that it wouldn't be a good idea, seeing as they were eight stories up. Maybe down in the lobby. "Thanks a million, Quick. Even when I'm having a shitty day I know I can come home to you and get bitched at for at least a good fifteen minutes. It does a lot for my morale."

"Hey, I've tried using kid gloves with you. It doesn't work." Pietro grabbed the phone receiver and spun it around like a cowboy's pistol in his hands. "I didn't invite her up here just so you could scream at each other."

"I know, Quick. Next time…" Lance's palms met his eyeballs as he tried to clear his vision, clear his head of this unbearable, constant frustration. "Next time, just warn me, okay? Her showing up all of a sudden kinda threw me off my game."

"Fine, I'll warn you." Lance could feel Pietro's laser-like gaze on him, and it made him uncomfortable. Pietro could be too intense sometimes. All the time. "You're going to call her, right?"

Lance took the liberty of one second to answer. "I guess. Yeah. Not now, though. I need to cool off. But I know I screwed up. I know I've been acting like one, but I'm not a huge idiot. I just need to cool down some. Maybe tomorrow."

"Okay. But just know that I'm holding you to it."

"Oh boy. I can't wait."

Pietro's legs crossed, and that meant business. "Where's the file that Drew gave us? Our information?"

"I got it right here." Lance groped for the file before grabbing it and tossing it to Pietro, who just managed to catch it. "Get out my papers for me, won't you?"

"Sure." Pietro rummaged through the file with his usual hastiness. He flung a wad of papers over to Lance, who was less than successful in receiving them. "There you go. You take care of that, I'll speed-read through the rest…"

Pietro finished reading first, of course, but Lance was in no rush. He always took his time when reading the details on their mission. This meant that Pietro was left to his own devices for a while, but shockingly the mutant was able to stay relatively still.

"We're college graduates," Lance mused. "I'll be damned. That's something new."

"I know, we're going to have to actually seem smart," Pietro lamented. The king of paradox continued: "I hate it when they give us difficult cases like this. But I also love a challenge."

They spent the next hour or so talking over every last scrap of information, making sure each knew their roles like the back of their hands. Lance was Bruce Kent, a recent college graduate who was taking up this job to pay for further education; Pietro was Clark Wayne, a graduate who had a degree in creative writing and needed a steady job as he tried writing a hit spec screenplay. Many of the particulars were the same as they had always been with those particular aliases – birthday, family, friends, hometown – but enclosed were the phone numbers of several professors (in reality S.H.I.E.L.D. undercover agents) who would "recommend" that the two be hired by the Club.

Also, specifics on the Club's clientele were included, as well as tips on how to act like experienced waiters. It seemed like too much, but if there was one thing Lance had learned during his time with S.H.I.E.L.D. it was that he was capable of things he would never have expected he would be. After only a number of months on the job he was already becoming a skilled thespian (re: liar).

They ordered in pizza, popped in a movie, and went to bed early. Another benefit of S.H.I.E.L.D. was that it had instilled some sense of discipline in the previously ramshackle Brotherhood, although not as much as Fury would've liked. Lance had always liked to go to bed early – a full day of hanging with the Brotherhood was enough to wear anyone out – but now even Pietro was hitting the hay before midnight. It hadn't been this way when they'd started, but they'd learned pretty quickly that it was much easier to run for your life when you were rested than it was to run for your life when you were dead tired. Less bullets at your heels.

A call from the hotel office woke them up at seven o'clock. Pietro, who had always been quick to rise, answered it and thanked them, and he was dressed before Lance was even out of bed. Pietro was wearing his "nice" outfit (Fury had taught them to bring outfits of different categorizations in order to prepare for anything; judging by his attire, Pietro had prepared for a modeling gig with Abercrombie), and as Lance threw off the comforter his partner inspected his collar.

"You figure they would've given us a suit or something," complained Pietro. "Isn't this supposed to be a nice joint?"

"Call Drew about it if you're so pissy," Lance grunted. He stumbled out of bed and began fumbling around for his suitcase. "Ask her if we need some sports coats or something."

Pietro got out his phone and the file and began to dial in Drew's number while Lance dragged out his only decent pair of slacks and began to pull them up his legs. He was groggy and grumpy, but that was pretty normal: he'd never been a morning person.

Pietro had always been one.

"Helloooooo, Ms. Drew," said the silver-haired man into his cell phone. "Yes, yes, we're both up, and we know our stuff. Don't you worry your pretty little head about that. But we were wondering if it mattered if we wore suits? I mean, when we need suits Fury usually provides them. We don't carry around our own."

Lance threw on an undershirt and reached for his collared shirt.

"Yes, I see. Good. I didn't want to have to inconvenience you." Pietro gave a fake laugh. "We don't need luck, Ms. Drew, but thanks anyways. You too. Au revoir."

He ended the call and threw the phone in his pocket. "Drew says no suit required. Apparently it's not in their dress code for waiters."

"Well thank God for that," Lance drawled as he buttoned up his shirt. "Wouldn't want to dress up any more, would we? Now where are my black shoes?"

He dressed and they headed downstairs to the lobby. They were hardly the first ones up, but plenty of tables still sat bare and lonely.

"All right!" Lance exclaimed, one hand on his stomach. "Free continental breakfast! The best part of my week right here!"

They loaded up on food and sat down to eat and watch whatever channel the TV was turned to (in this case, CNN). Congressmen were debating the subprime crisis and bank bailouts as a silver-haired dude mediated – yadda yadda yadda – and Lance only hoped that they'd cut off before they got to the mutant issue. He didn't need to start off his day mad over something some stupid politician said.

"It's nearly eight," Pietro said as he munched on a muffin. "We need to leave soon."

"All right. Just let me finish my coffee."

Lance chugged down the rest of his drink and set it down on the table with a loud sigh, licking his bottom lip to get every last drop. He was already feeling much better than he had when he woke up, which was definitely a good sign. No matter how many strings Fury had pulled, it would probably be hard to get the job if he bit his prospective employer's head off.

They cleaned up after themselves and headed outside to get a cab. It didn't take long, and soon enough they were both cramming into the backseat of yet another taxi.

"Hellfire Club," Pietro ordered, strapping on his seatbelt.

The cabbie snorted. "Well, ain't we swanky today?"

"I forgot the address," continued Pietro. "Do you know where it is?"

"Of course I know where it is!" exclaimed the driver. "Who doesn't know where it is? What do you think I am, some kinda idiot? You're a tourist, aren't you? Of course you are. What am I saying. I hate tourists. So stinkin' arrogant. I hope you guys aren't arrogant. I wouldn't like that."

The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents shared a glance but said nothing, which was probably for the best. The ride to the club was quiet, the silence only broken by the driver's occasional humming or low muttering.

They pulled up to a stop amidst a large traffic jam. Neither was surprised by this – Chicago is not particularly known for its clear streets – but soon it became clear that this wasn't just a traffic jam.

"What're you waiting for?" the cabbie asked. "We're here."

Lance was about to say something in response, but Pietro tapped him on the shoulder and nodded to the window. The Hellfire Club was evidently looking to impress, and the rich bastards could rest easy with their polished Italian shoes and oblong martini glasses – they'd succeeded. A long, marble staircase led to an elaborate Gothic building at least five or six stories high, skyscrapers sticking out in the background like overgrown weeds. The front doors were massive, and one stone gargoyle stood on each side, guarding the club against any unwelcome visitors.

"Hot damn," was Pietro's elegant musing. Lance couldn't think of anything to say at all.

"I could just sit here for a while," said the cabbie, interrupting their moment of awe and wonder, "or you could get out and I could find other paying customers. Up to you. I'm in no hurry. No rent to pay or nothin'."

"Fine," Pietro muttered. He threw open the door and hopped out of the car with great speed, although Lance could tell that he was restraining himself. "Lance, you pay the nice cab driver. I forgot my wallet."

Lance knew it was best not to argue so he pulled out a crisp bill (provided by a government bank account, possibly counterfeit) and stuffed it in the driver's outstretched hand. "Here you go," he growled as he kicked his legs out of the door and with a helping hand from Pietro pulled himself up. He slammed the door and broke eye contact with the driver. "Have a wonderful day. May many pigeons bless your windshield with their shit."

"Amen," echoed Pietro. He motioned to the stairs. "You first, buddy."

"Wimp."

Lance led the way up the wide stairway. As they climbed it, he began to get a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he were Rocky Balboa in sweats (although in that case, they should probably be jogging, he thought to himself). A few others hung around the edge of the stairway, talking on their cell phones or typing away into their PDAs or generally doing whatever it was business types liked to do. All were completely oblivious to the world around them and talked in loud, nasal voices with fake, tinny laughs. Lance had the strange feeling that, when hired, he would be spitting in a lot of people's food.

"Mind getting the door?"

"Whatever." Lance held it open and let the wannabe-diva walk in ahead of him. He followed, allowing the door to shut behind him. "Jeez, could they put on a light or something?"

"More like a torch," remarked Pietro. The interior of the building looked like something out of Dracula, and everything had a distinct red tint. Lance had trouble seeing even a few feet.

"Hello," greeted the man behind the register. "You are…?"

"Clark Wayne," said Pietro, "and my friend Bruce Kent. We're here to apply for jobs at the restaurant."

"Oh yes. I think Leland mentioned you two. Take an elevator down to the underground floor. Someone there will help you."

"All right. Thanks."

Pietro led the way to one of the elevators, which was just as ridiculously large as anything else in the Hellfire Club. They waited for a minute before the plain steel door slid open, allowing them access to the interior. Lance jammed the 'U' button and they waited as the door closed.

"Nice place," commented Lance.

"No kidding. I'm already depressed." Pietro suddenly checked his watch. "Oh shit, I forgot about the inducers. Turn yours on."

"Damn it," Lance murmured as he activated his disguise. "D'you think they'll notice?"

"Nah," said the newly blond Pietro. "We look pretty similar to ourselves anyway, and that room was too damn dark to see anything. No biggie."

It was a short ride to the underground level. The door slid away again and they were confronted with a diminished jazz chord from a piano some fifty feet down. There was a buzz of quiet conversation, and big circular tables were situated all around the main stage in the center of the floor where the pianist rung out each note of the song with perfect precision. A saxophonist and guitarist were sitting down next to their instruments, apparently on a break. It was exactly the kind of restaurant Lance wouldn't be caught dead in, and even if he was, he'd probably be kicked out within seconds of entering. And to think that he was applying for a job there.

"May I help you?" asked a woman. Lance decided she was the hostess. If not he'd pretend she were anyway and see how far the force of will could take him.

"Yeah, we're here to apply for jobs," started Pietro, but that was all Potential Hostess needed.

"Oh! That's right. You need to see Mr. Leland." She stepped out from behind her desk and walked past them. "Right this way. Follow me."

She led them down the hallway branching off to the right. The decorum changed considerably as they progressed down it, the gothic wooden panels evolving into plain steel walls illuminated by fluorescent lights. Lance mentally noted every doorway and took a glance behind him, noticing that another similar hallway ran in the opposite direction of the one they'd taken.

She stopped in front of a door simply marked 'PERSONNEL.' "This is it. I'll show you in."

She pushed open the door and through the sliver Lance could make out a desk and a man working on his laptop. "Mr. Leland? The two job applicants are here."

"Yes? Good. Let them in." She stepped back and allowed the two to pass her. When they were standing a comfortable distance inside the office, Leland nudged his pen towards the woman. "Thank you, Karolina."

The door shut and they were alone with the man. Lance was about to make an awkward introduction, but Leland spared him the need.

"Let me introduce myself." A pale hand extended, blue collared shirt just slightly wrinkled. "I'm Harry Leland. I make all of the personnel decisions here at the Hellfire Club, among other things."

"Clark Wayne," said Pietro, shaking Leland's hand.

"Bruce Kent," said Lance as he took the hand and gave it one jab upward.

"Pleasure meeting you boys." Leland put his hand in his pocket and gestured to two seats behind them with his free hand. "Please, sit."

They did, and he took a seat behind his desk. Now that his face wasn't hidden in shadows, Lance immediately saw a resemblance in Leland to Orson Welles. The combed back hair, the puffy cheeks, the piercing eyes. Most of all, the skin white as provolone. Leland looked just like an over-powdered Bela Lugosi. Or Robert Pattinson, Lance supposed. Not as good looking as the latter, though. Kitty was crazy about that Pattinson guy. Dick.

"I'm sure we've all got plenty of things to do today, so we're going to try to keep this short." Leland pushed his laptop to the side so he had a clearer view of them. "Let me just say that I've heard wonderful things from your professors and former employers."

"Really?" said Lance with a degree of modesty he didn't think Pietro could pull off. "That's nice of them. They're probably exaggerating a little."

"Oh, possibly. I'm not going to jerk your chain at all. Waiting tables isn't exactly hard. But waiting tables at the Hellfire Club is nigh impossible. We're not looking for good servers. We're looking for good servers and good people. Our customers are only the most elite members of society. If you get nervous, this isn't the job for you, which is exactly why we've done such extensive background checks."

"You really do this much just to hire a couple of waiters?" Pietro asked.

"Oh yes," said Leland. "We're all about quality. It's important to us that we maintain our reputation as the best in the world. By hiring you, can we trust you with that reputation?"

Lance straightened up in his chair, posture perfect enough to please the bitch formerly known as Mystique. "Yes, sir, you can."

"I thought so." Leland chuckled, and his face moved into the light in such a way that the blood vessels beneath his skin became visible. "I heard a story about you from one of your former professors… Nicholson, I believe?"

The two shared a glance. Lance had a bemused expression on his face, but Pietro just mouthed 'Fury' and Lance nodded. The interaction was quick enough that Leland didn't even notice it. Pietro's talents did come in handy once in a blue moon.

"Yeah, Nicholson's a talented storyteller," Pietro remarked. Lance could feel the inevitable follow-up questions coming, but any such story hadn't been detailed in their file, and he could only guess it had been an improvisation by Fury. Pietro did the smart thing and cut Leland off before he could ask them a question they didn't know the answer to. "Listen, Mr. Leland, I'm not going to mess around. Bruce and I want these jobs. We're two kids that need the money and frankly I think it would be a great experience to be around such high society in such a close proximity."

"Definitely," Lance agreed after detecting Pietro's expectant gaze upon him. "It's one of those life experiences you can't find in a classroom."

"Exactly my thoughts," continued his companion. "Now, we're two hard-working, honest guys who'll do what it takes to make the customers happy. We're not upper class or anything, but we want these jobs and we want to do them well. Obviously you've done your homework. You'd know if we weren't decent human beings. Enough with the chit chat. Can we help you out or not?"

Lance appreciated the move, as he tended to get antsy during long talks with people he was lying to. Leland's expression was less decipherable. He studied them for several long moments as if they were especially interesting pieces of artwork, trying to discern any flaws or stray splotches of paint. Finally his pallid countenance shifted into a broad smile.

"I can understand your impatience. I feel the same way. Time is money, and money… well, money is everything!" he added with a laugh. He stood again. "It's been a nice talk. If you want the jobs, they're yours."

"Thank you, sir," Lance replied as he shook Leland's hand. Pietro did the same. "We won't let you down. You can trust us." _And hopefully you will_, Lance thought to himself. _That'll make the spying a damn lot easier._

"Ditto," echoed Pietro. "I know we've just been hired and everything, sir, but when will we start?"

"Oh, you can start training on Monday. That will give you the weekend off."

"No offense, sir, but if you wouldn't mind, could we stick around the next two days and see how things work here?" Leland looked confused, so Pietro hurried to continue. "I know we haven't started training or anything yet, but I'm not asking to start waiting or be paid or anything. I just want to hang around with the staff and see how things work here. Off the clock, of course. I want to make sure we live up to the standards set by the Hellfire Club."

Once more Lance appreciated Pietro's thought process. The sooner they got their information, the sooner they could get the hell out of Chicago, and the sooner they could get away from everything – and everyone – that came with it.

Leland gave it some consideration before shrugging. "Oh, why not? I'm sure it can't hurt. It's nice to see employees with some initiative for a change. I can see why you were so highly recommended. Go back and find Karolina and ask her to bring you to Kine. He runs most everything with the restaurant, and you'll report directly to him, although I want you to contact me if you have any other issues. Tell Kine that you're the new waiters and you're just going to hang around to see how things go and all. Basically what you told me. He may send you home, but I don't think he'll mind. And even if he does, I'm _his_ boss, after all, and what I say goes."

"Thank you, sir," said Lance. "We'll get out of your way now."

"Yes, yes." He sat down and turned his attention to his laptop. "Been a pleasure, boys."

"The same to you."

They filed out of the room and into the hall. Pietro smirked at Lance with a knowing expression.

"Jesus, we were starting to sound like Summers for a second there," grunted Lance. He did his best impression of the erstwhile leader of the X-Geeks. "Yes sir. No sir. More coffee, sir? Would you like your asshole licked, sir, or just gently powdered? You're welcome, sir."

"I knew you'd say that," replied the smirk personified. "But you've got to give me props for my quick thinking. I don't want to be stuck here for a couple months gathering intel. Boooooring."

"Yeah, that was pretty nice. Let's go find that Kine dude or whatever and tell him that we're gonna stick around." Lance pounded his fist into his palm, now emulating Duncan Matthews. "Maybe use our methods of persuasion if he tries to send us off."

Pietro wasn't thinking along the same lines, though. "No way, Lancey. We're in this super-secret hallway. Might as well explore around a bit! I wonder what's at the end…"

"Oh come on, we haven't even been on the job five minutes and already you're taking a stupid risk."

"Stop complaining! We're spies, that's what we do!" Pietro darted his head back and forth in a whirlwind of motion. "I really hope they aren't taping us. Doesn't look like they are, but I only scanned the room. Let's keep it quieter from here on out."

"Agreed," concurred Lance. "So we going to go see what's at the end of the hall here?"

"Lead the way, Rocky!"

Lance ignored the nickname and focused on taking long strides down the hallway. Many doors were unmarked, and Pietro tried them all before Lance could even reach them.

"Locked," he said as he walked back to Lance. "Sucks for us."

"Stop being too obvious with your powers," Lance hissed. "I know they've gotta have cameras someplace in here."

"Hey, I'm _trying_ to slow it down. It's not my fault you move like the Jeep on the day after one of Tabby's old joyrides." Pietro jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "I didn't check the end of the hall, though. Shall we?"

They approached the end of the hall, Lance making sure that Pietro didn't walk much faster than he did. The door at the end of the hall was also the single door on the left, and the single door that had a keypad and a glass rectangle at eye-level.

"Eye scanner," noted Pietro. "Seen Father use them before."

"It looks like they're paranoid about something," Lance commented. "That or just a lot more exclusive than we thought they were."

"Well at least this makes our job a lot easier."

"How so?"

Pietro rewarded him with a grin. "Now we know we've _got_ to get inside that door."

-


	5. My Extraordinary Work Ethic

This is a shorter chapter, but the chapters ahead have a little more to them. We're at about the halfway point of this novella.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evolution, but I hope you knew that by now.

* * *

-

_My Extraordinary Work Ethic_

Benedict Kine was not a man Lance was especially pleased to be spying on. Everything about the man screamed intimidation. His eyes leered out from behind his thick glasses like those of an alert predator stalking its prey's every move, and long, flowing black hair parted to each side in the middle of his scalp, framing his sharp face with perfect symmetry. His mustache was well-kept, and his teeth gleamed an untainted white in the low light of the restaurant.

"You want to stick around, huh?" Kine opened his mouth wide in a grin as he continued chewing his stick of gum. "Interesting. Very interesting. But I like it. I like that kind of dedication. People are always talking bad about this generation, but stuff like this gives me hope."

For a split second Lance felt a burst of joy spread all the way to his fingertips, and then there was a burst of pain, but as soon as the sensations had come they left. Kine seemed to notice nothing.

"So, just hang out. The kitchen's back there – you know, the place marked 'kitchen' – and you can introduce yourself to some of the wait staff and ask them how we do things around here. I'm not going to bother to actually start training you until Monday, but you can learn a little this weekend. The best way to do these things is to just throw yourself straight into the fire. As I always say, you're never going to learn if you've never felt the burn."

"That's the story of my life!" Pietro exclaimed. Lance recognized that his friend had gone into Full Suck-Up Mode and watched as he worked his magic. "I hate just sitting around and waiting. I like going head on and tackling things that way."

Kine laughed, but Lance thought it sounded more like a cackle. "I like you, Wayne. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership."

"Me too, sir." Pietro shook Kine's hand. "We'll head straight to the kitchen."

"You do that." Kine offered his hand to Lance, and Lance shook it, a tingle running up his arm as he did. "I've got to go deal with one of our suppliers. The wait staff knows what they're doing, so don't worry about me."

"Right on. See you later, boss."

Kine moved past them and headed for the elevator. Lance placed his hands in his pockets and gave Pietro an expectant glare. "What now?"

"We go hang out in the kitchen and acquaint ourselves," Pietro said, sounding fully confident in his plan. "They'll probably just tell us to get the hell out of their way, which is perfect because then we can walk around and eavesdrop on people."

Pietro's prediction proved to be accurate. The wait staff hardly paid them any attention, as each member was busy with their tables, and the cooks were even busier. Lance and Pietro settled themselves against a wall between the kitchen and the main restaurant area.

"Who're we supposed to spy on now?" Lance asked.

"Don't know." Pietro shrugged. "Whoever looks like they're important."

Lance's tongue rolled over the toothpick in his mouth. "Sounds like a plan."

The two soon found out that it was a lot harder to pick out potential spying candidates than they ever would have guessed. Most of the patrons of the restaurant seemed to just be talking about normal things – family, religion, the Republican Party, drugs, sex, _Lost_ – and while some of the things they said might have been scandalous on a personal level, Lance doubted that they were of any concern to a national security agency.

"Maybe they're talking in code," Pietro suggested after some two hours of this espionage. It was clear that the speedster was beginning to get irritated: he wasn't exactly very patient. "Like in those secret agent movies."

"Fury's taping all this, isn't he? So I'm sure he can get his lackeys to go over the tapes and figure that crap out later. Not our problem." Lance leaned his back against one of the walls and crossed his arms. "We need to rethink how we're doing this."

"No shit, Alvers. Did it take you this long to come up with _that_ bright idea?"

If it weren't for Pietro's superhuman reflexes Lance would have smacked him across the jaw. "Shut it, Maximoff."

Pietro's jaw bobbed up and down as he chewed on a piece of gum. "I've got an idea," he said after taking time to deliberate (meaning five seconds, tops).

"Shoot." Lance beckoned for him to continue.

"Well, it kinda depends. When I go really fast, can you see me?"

"Yeah. Not well, but yeah."

"I thought so. But we'll have to risk it." Pietro spat out his gum onto the floor. "Listen, here's the idea: I check that other hallway that we didn't check out, but I need you to distract the hostess. Karoline or whatever her name was."

"And how the hell am I s'posed to distract her?" questioned Lance.

"I don't know. Hit on her. Ask her out. You can do this. Come on, I'm just asking for thirty seconds. Maybe forty-five."

Lance felt himself growing irritated and knew it was showing – after all these years he still had something of a temper – but he knew it was best not to argue. "Okay. Fine. But after a minute of small talk I'm done."

"Good. You head over there first. I'll come over once I see you've got her attention."

Lance shrugged himself off of the wall and began to wander over to the entrance area. Once he'd passed the main dining sector, he sauntered up to the hostess and leaned one elbow on the podium, offering her a grin.

"What's up?" he said. The girl barely moved. "I didn't catch your name earlier."

"Then I guess you weren't listening," said the hostess. _Someone_ was feeling icy.

"Yeah, I do that sometimes." Lance decided to take a small gamble and turned to face the spot that he had previously occupied. Pietro was gone. "Where's Clark? I coulda sworn he was right there."

The girl's eyes followed his for just a moment, but that was all Quicksilver needed. A faint breeze tickled Lance's shoulders, informing him that Pietro had gotten by.

"I don't see him," she finally stated.

"Me neither." Lance rewarded her with a smile. "Thanks for looking, anyways. Most people would've just told me to eff myself."

"It's funny that you think I won't do just that."

"A sharp tongue. I _like_ that!" It was a half truth. Kitty could giggle, but in between fits of ditziness she could also be the most misanthropic, sarcastic cynic the world had ever seen, albeit with a streak of annoying idealism. Thinking about it made his head hurt. "What other good qualities are you blessed with?"

"The common sense to ignore the advances of a coworker."

"Ouch, blondie. Ouch." The mutant flicked his head back and rested his chin on his palm. She was a pretty girl, all in all, but a bit too pretentious for his liking. But it didn't seem unnatural to hit on her. "Let's just forget about common sense for a second. You got a cell phone number?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember it off the top of your head?"

She looked at him like he was an idiot. _Not far off,_ said a nagging voice in his head that sounded too much like Fury. "Of course."

"Ooh, we've got a child prodigy here," commented Lance. He inflected a hint of disbelief into his delivery. "You can remember your own number? I never remember mine. I always have to program it into my phone."

"So sad for you."

"Ohhhhhh. I get it. You're bluffing." He stood up and laughed. "I knew it. Just trying to impress me is all. _That's_ why you said you remembered your number."

"Don't be an idiot," harrumphed the girl. "Of course I remember my own number!"

He bent over the podium, challenging her. "Oh yeah? Prove it."

This act of bravado actually earned him a laugh. He nearly dropped dead right there of shock.

"Oh, that's marginally clever," admitted the hostess. "For a second there I actually thought you were a complete imbecile. That's one of the better ones I've heard."

"I thought so." He grinned at her. "So… are you going to give it to me or not?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On what you're looking for."

He cocked an eyebrow so far that his hair hid it. "And what are _you_ looking for?"

"A woman."

Several seconds passed as he processed this. At first he thought she was being intentionally oblique, but the more and more that the cogs of his brain whirred away at this answer the more he realized her true meaning. Then he thought she was being sarcastic and trying to aggravate him. But there was something about her face as she said it, something that was reserved yet defensive at the same time. He couldn't be sure whether she was joking or not, but he decided to throw all his chips in the anteceding pot and see what happened.

"Oh. Well, that's cool. Different strokes for different folks."

"Really?" Her voice rose in pitch on the second syllable. "You're one of the few people that's ever told me that."

"Nah, I mean it," he said, and he did. "I know what it's like to be an outsider."

A tap on his shoulder interrupted any further meaningful conversation the two might've had. It was Pietro. "Someone said you were looking for me, Bruce?"

"Oh yeah. My bad, Clark. I just got hung up talking. I was going to ask you about what that one waiter showed us: what we do when we refill the water glasses." After months of work in S.H.I.E.L.D., it had gotten to the point where the stories just wrote themselves. "See you later, blondie. I'll catch you some other time."

The girl turned back to her seating chart and Lance followed Pietro between the rows of tables. "What'd you find?"

"Not anything immediate," said Pietro. Something about his expression bothered Lance. "I don't get it. I can't find any cameras. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, I've noticed one at the front entrance, one in the elevator, and then a few in the restaurants, but none in any of the rooms or hallways."

"Maybe they don't need cameras," Lance offered. "Look at the X-Men. Xavier can just pop around telepathically to find out what's been going on around there."

"That doesn't stop them from having a full freaking defense system, though." Pietro rubbed his chin with the heel of his hand. "Maybe… maybe they've got nothing to hide here. This place is pretty old, anyways, so they might not have ever bothered to get cameras installed, especially if they didn't feel the need. I think that maybe this part of the Club, at least, is legitimate. There's something else here, where the real business goes on…" He smacked his hands together. "Damn it, if we could just get past that door!"

"I think it's pretty obvious that not just anyone can get in there. We're going to need to get someone to open it, and we're going to need to get one of the higher ups to do it."

"And how exactly are we supposed to do that, Fearless Leader?" Pietro asked.

Lance double-checked to make sure no one else was in earshot and then lowered his voice regardless. "Well, I don't' think we're gonna be able to trick them into doing it or anything. We're gonna have to figure out who's important enough to be able to get in, and then we're going to need to make them open it for us by force. I know it's probably not the safest option, and we're only gonna have an hour or two before they figure out what's going on, tops. We've got one shot at this. Let's do our homework and make sure we don't blow it."

"Sounds unnecessarily dangerous," Pietro remarked.

Lance hid his grin from the businessman walking by them into the cigar room. "It fits us perfectly. Just our style."

"My thoughts exactly, Lancey buddy. My thoughts exactly."

After some heavy brainstorming the two decided to hang around the restaurant and listen in on conversations to see if they could pick out any of the high rollers. It was harder work than they would've thought, but they kept at it for an hour or two before regrouping.

"Any luck?" Lance inquired of Pietro as the latter approached him.

He received a shake of the head. "Nope. A few people mentioned, but mostly it seems like they're talking about activities outside of the Club. You?"

"No. Every time I think I'm getting close they start staring at me like I'm about to pickpocket them." He directed his glare towards an extravagantly conspicuous couple sharing lobster a few feet from them. "Stuck-up assholes."

"We're approaching this the wrong way. Again." With a sigh Pietro adjusted his shirt collar, perhaps too quickly for a normal human. "Any more bright ideas?"

"I wish." Lance's eyes scanned the room. He'd noticed that there was no table larger than four, and that conversations were usually quiet and reserved. He wasn't sure if this was how rich people acted normally, or if they figured they needed to put on a good face in public, but either way it aggravated him for some reason he couldn't figure out. His gaze swept from a table of three to another elderly couple and to the hostess, and that's when another "bright" idea came to him. "Actually, yes."

"Really?"

"I think so. Remember the hostess? She kinda started to warm up to me at the end. We could always talk to her, act like we're just interested in the restaurant and see what she knows about the Club."

"Have I ever told you you're a genius?"

Lance's laugh was sharp and staccato. It reverberated off the walls, each note swirling in an oscillating echo. Weird, he thought. "You can never say it enough, Quicksilver."

"Don't let me hold you back, man. Go take care of business!"

Pietro flicked his head towards the girl and then at Lance, who just nodded and turned away. He did his best to appear casual as he sauntered up to the hostess and her podium.

"Sorry about the interruption," he said. The hostess's head made a bare movement. "Had to go take care of Official Waiter Business."

"Do you know how to refill the water glasses now?" she asked, but her smirk was almost playful now.

He puffed out his chest. "Oh yeah, I'm pretty much an expert. Soon I'll be able to refill sodas, as well. It'll be pretty badass."

"Sounds like it."

"Yep." With a great yawn he stretched his arms high above his head. "Now what exactly were we talking about before Clark pulled me over there?"

"I don't remember."

"Thanks for the help, Barbie. And by the way, are you gonna tell me your real name, or do I have to keep thinkin' up these awesome nicknames? I'm starting to run out."

"You'd better think of some more."

"Fine, will do."

A thick man of perhaps fifty walked by them, a voluptuous brunette at least fifteen years his junior holding onto his arm. He had hair nearly as blond as the hostess's, although thin strands of white fell in his eyes. The hostess bowed her head to him as he walked past. He waved in response.

Lance watched the man as he pulled out a chair for his date. "Who's the geezer?"

"Edward Buckman, one of the Club's higher-ups." This caught Lance's interest. "Comes in every Saturday with a different woman, comes in on Sundays alone, and comes in on either Wednesday or Thursday with a group of business associates. I'm off on Mondays and Fridays, so I can't tell you anything about those days."

"He does the same thing every week? Seriously?"

"Yeah. When you stand at a podium all day, you notice these things."

"So he'll be in here alone tomorrow?" Lance asked, only realizing how conspicuous it sounded after he said it. He quickly added, "And on Wednesday I'll have to wait on him and all his friends? There's no doubt in your mind?"

"No. I'm certain. Club members tend to be creatures of habit."

She didn't seem suspicious, and he internally sighed in relief. _All right. Tomorrow one of the big dogs is gonna be alone. Looks like I've got my sucker._

"So people get rich, they buy their way in here, and then they do the same damn thing day after day," he mused, keeping his thoughts to himself.

"Pretty much."

"That's boring."

"That's why they buy sports teams and yachts," she replied. "I imagine they do it to break the monotony."

"Huh. Wish I had that much cash to burn whenever I get bored."

"Don't we all?"

Lance jutted his hand in his pocket and chanced a glance in Pietro's direction. His partner was leaned against a column, watching him with crossed arms. "I should probably get back to Clark. He gets bored easily, you know. I think we forgot his Ritalin today."

"You two live together?" she asked.

"Oh yeah," Lance said, glad that this time he wouldn't even have to lie. "We live with a couple of other guys and Clark's sister in a house we all, uh, rent. It's not much, but we have a good time together."

"Sounds fun." She looked at her seating chart. "You should go. Kine will get mad if he thinks you're distracting me."

"Oh. My bad." He delivered a sheepish grin. "I'll catch you around, blondie."

She said nothing. Apparently she wasn't much of a talker. Like he hadn't figured _that_ out by now.

He turned away from her and walked back to Pietro. The silver-haired agent surveyed him with attentive eyes.

"Well?" he asked, expectant.

"I got a name," Lance said. "One of the big dogs, Edward Buckman. He comes in with a bimbo every Saturday, and with business friends every Wednesday or Thursday." Lance's eyes flashed. "And he comes in alone every Sunday."

"All right!" exclaimed Pietro, pumping his fist into the air. He nearly hit one of the light fixtures and quickly withdrew his hand. "So it looks like we've got something to do tomorrow, huh?"

"Yep. I'm thinking we should probably get in touch with Fury, see what he can tell us about this Buckman guy. I don't want to try to mug some super secret extra powerful mutant and really piss him off."

"Good thinking." Pietro grinned the stupidest grin all of a sudden. "See? We make a great team, Alvers."

Lance snorted. "Yeah, we really do, _Maximoff._ Whatever. I just want to get this shit over without getting my ass kicked or making a complete fool of myself."

"Attaway to shoot for the stars, buddy."

Lance just gave his friend a sloppy punch in the arm.

-


	6. My Flashback Sequence

This is my favorite chapter so far, indicated by the fact that when I edited it I couldn't find anything to really change, and from here on out the story will become more expansive. As a note, to anyone who noticed: in this story U of Chicago has been altered around to a more city/open campus school, just for plot convenience.

* * *

-

_My Flashback Sequence_

The two sat in their hotel room, sipping beer Lance had bought at a liquor store nearby the hotel. The more they drank the happier they became, to the point that even the nightly news program was in its own way uniquely hysterical.

"Oh – my – _God," _Pietro sputtered, spewing out little bits of boneless chicken wing with each laugh. "That's just like when Todd fell off the roof!"

"I know!" said Lance as he took a swig of his beer. He grinned. "You won't believe this. Then he says – I'm not kidding, he actually says this – he says that we'd better clear out or things are going to get ugly. So Wanda, you know how she is, she says, 'All right, let's get ugly,' and then –" Lance stopped to laugh again "– she turns his face into a freaking _eel. _I don't even mean a fish, I'm talking straight up _electric eel!"_

For the space of one car commercial and half a fast food advertisement the television could not be heard over the giggling. When they finally settled down Pietro let out a loud burp and clinked bottles with Lance.

"Get me another one, ol' sport."

Lance reached into the paper bag and grabbed a bottle by the neck, offering it to his counterpart. Pietro accepted it and tossed his empty bottle down on the floor between the two beds.

"So," said Lance as he unwrapped a candy bar. "Buckman tomorrow."

"Yeah. We should prolly call Fury."

"Yeah."

"Nose goes!"

Of course it was impossible to even think about the proposition before Pietro had his finger to his left nostril, smirking. Lance tossed the balled-up wrapper at him and got out his cell phone, holding '3' on his speed dial. In seconds he was rewarded with the gruff monotone of his genteel commander.

"What the hell is it, Alvers?"

"Fury! You don't sound too happy to hear from us."

"Please, Alvers," grunted the S.H.I.E.L.D. commander. "I've got at least three national security concerns on my hands, not to mention the missions I've for some unfathomable reason entrusted to you dunces." A pause on the other end. "So help me God, Avalanche, if you have bad news I am going to tear you apart limb by limb and scatter the pieces across the Sahara."

"No! The mission's going well. We've been able to get some information on the group. We've found a security door, one of those uber-conspicuous ones like you see in the movies, but it needs clearance we don't have. We're planning on, uh, convincing a club member named Edward Buckman to help us get in. We just wanted to know if we're about to mess with the wrong rich dude."

"Name doesn't ring a bell, but I'll have one of the lackeys run it through the database. Have you checked their security?"

"Besides the door not much. No guards except for the fat one near the door, and we can't find a single camera."

"At least not in the public area," Fury commented. "No need for them there. They're known for their privacy, and maybe half of the stuff that goes on in the main area is actually legal, so there's no reason to make their members feel threatened with tacky 1980's security devices the cops might subpoena. As for the guards, that's more worrisome, although pretty predictable. From what we know of the group, they've got mutants among their clientele, and I imagine many of their workers are also mutants. No need for armed guards when you've got an all-natural team of enforcers."

Lance put the television on mute. A startling sense of sobriety overtook him, along with an urgency to hear every word Fury said. "I wonder why they never asked us if we were mutants. Huh. All right. What about Buckman?"

"One second. I'm getting the report right now." Pietro glanced at him, but Lance just shook his head. "From what we know he's a human, and our information is pretty accurate most of the time. But you'd better damn well not screw this up. Buckman's got some shady associates. You don't want to piss off the wrong people. Get what you need from him and use the injections we gave you. They're brand spanking new, and they'll make him forget his name if you give him enough. Then smack a tracker on him and we'll have our agents deal with him later."

"Sounds like a plan."

He heard Fury sigh on the other end. "Be careful, Alvers, and tell Maximoff to do the same. We're not asking you to bring them down. Just get in there, get what you can, and get the hell out. Once you find something of value, bail. These people are bad news, and we don't need any casualties. Your powers in particular are useless in this situation, and we'd prefer avoiding lethal force unless it's absolutely necessary. We don't need an investigation. Are we clear?"

Lance's heart, however, had stopped somewhere around the word "casualties," which never failed to subvert any of his earnest attempts to pay attention. "Uh, yeah. Got it."

"Good. Don't screw this up. I'm counting on you."

"Wow. Thanks, Fury. I didn't know you believed in us."

"You didn't let me finish. I'm counting on you because if you two go and get killed, I don't know what other pair of mutants in their right minds would be able to tolerate the rest of your team."

"I should put this on speakerphone, Petey," Lance said in his best impersonation of one of those sappy ladies on the old fifties sitcoms Fred liked to watch. "Fury's worried about us!"

"I know you're scared shitless, Alvers." Lance hated how the man was always so damned accurate. "Making a mockery of me doesn't change that. But I guess that's your way of coping. Good luck, kid. And remember, if one of you goes down in combat, it's perfectly ethical to use the corpse as a human shield. I can't tell you how many times that's saved my life."

Lance couldn't tell if his employer was serious or not. And Fury wasn't one for sarcasm. "Uh, yeah. I'll remember that."

"Good. Pardon me, the CIA needs my help with a coup in Haiti and an attack on some Somalian pirates. I've got to go. I'm expecting good news tomorrow."

There was a click and Lance knew Fury had hung up on him.

"So what's the scoop?" asked Pietro, chewing on a mouthful of crackerjacks.

"Buckman's a human, but Fury wants us to use the injections on him and then place a tracker on him just to be sure. He expects that there are a lot of Club members that _are_ mutants, so we should be careful and get what we can. The theme of his message, I think, was 'don't get killed.'" Lance turned up the volume on the television. "Dunno about you, but I feel inspired now."

"Oh yeah, Fury's got a knack for rhetoric."

"Pietro?"

"What?"

"Never use a word that reminds me of my senior year English class."

"Was that the one –"

"Yes," Lance said, wincing as he remembered several noteworthy events that had occurred during that class. "That's the one with all the… stuff."

"Oh." Pietro let loose a laugh. "Oh! _Oh-ho-ho-ho!_ At first I was thinking of something else, but then I remembered, that was also the class where you had to dress up for that play and then –"

"Pietro, just shut up. Please."

"Trying to forget about it won't work, Lance," Pietro taunted him. "It's best to deal with these things up front and personal."

"Pietro, if you don't shut up right now, I'm going to get my razor out of my bag and shave your head when you're sleeping. I'm not freakin' kidding, man. Those are _bad_ memories. But I'm sure you'll look fine with a big chunk of hair missing right in the middle of your head…"

It was Pietro's turn to grimace. "Low blow, Lance. Low blow!"

The rest of the night was perpetuated by equally thought-provoking banter.

"Have you ever smoked pot?" Pietro asked at one juncture.

Lance had been picking lint out of his toes and was caught in between his fattest toe and his longest one. "Pardon?"

"Pot. Marijuana. Cannabis. Weed. Have you done it?"

"I don't smoke."

"Have you ever smoked pot, though?"

Lance scratched the top of his foot and let himself fall backwards onto the pillow. "Well, I tried normal cigarettes at twelve but thought they were nasty. Then I tried pot at fourteen but thought it was pretty annoying as well and that the high was overrated. So yeah, I have, but just a couple times to test it out."

"Huh."

"Why're you asking?"

Pietro shrugged, blowing a strand of hair from his eyes. "Dunno. Never really tried it. Father wouldn't have liked it, but now that I'm not worried about him on my ass all the time I was wondering."

"Fury would beat the living shit out of you, you know."

"I know." A grin. "But sometimes the risk is worth the reward, right?"

"I guess. But if you ask me, pot's overrated. I'd rather blow my cash on something worthwhile."

Pietro released a sharp laugh. "Like heroin?"

A collage of old memories flashed through the back of Lance's head, swirling around to the front until it nearly consumed him. _Don't worry, Daddy's just fine. He's just angry._ A boy cowering in the corner. _Didn't I tell you to shut your mouth?_ A bill on the table, ignored. _They can go to hell. Ain't ever done nothin' for us._

"If you ever try heroin, it won't be Fury or Mags you have to worry about," Lance said in a severe breath. "Useless junkies. Waste of human beings, if you ask me. They're better off dead."

"Wow, harsh." He could feel Pietro's stare on his forehead for a long while. "You… _knew_ addicts, didn't you?"

Lance grunted. "Everyone knows addicts, just different kinds."

"Yeah."

There was a long awkward silence as each contemplated the turn the conversation had taken. Pietro's eyes followed Lance's hand as the elder of the two grabbed his half-empty bottle of beer from the nightstand and took a short swig.

"So when'd you first try beer?"

Lance tried in vain not to surrender a smile. "Let's just say I knew my way 'round the liquor store by the time I came to Bayville."

"I can toast to that!"

Pietro reached across the divide between their beds and held out his bottle; Lance, in a good humor, clinked the bottle with his own.

"To alcohol!" Lance said.

"To writing off alcohol as a business expense!" Pietro said.

At some point they both began to doze off, although Pietro was first to fall victim to sleep. He was incredibly quick to rise and incredibly quick to bed (whenever he actually _decided_ to go to bed), which perhaps should've been made obvious by the very nature of his mutation. Lance, however, had more difficulty in losing consciousness. The muted TV blared a short distance from the foot of his bed, but even so he didn't feel like turning it off. It was comforting in the way it disrupted the silence that always bothered him in his bed at home. Maybe, he thought wryly, he'd been living with the Brotherhood too long, to the point where he hated any sort of peace and quiet at all.

Inexorably his thoughts drifted, as they always did, to the subject he'd least like to think about. In this case, as had been the case for the last few months, that subject was his difficulties with one Kitty Pryde. They'd talked today and he'd screwed it up, as he always did, and even thinking for a second about their argument made him feel like an asshole all over again.

Kitty'd used to be a source of happiness for him – the juvenile, puppy love happiness he had been too stupid to recognize for what it was – but now she was a dependable spring of misery. Things had in no way ended well between them, and he fully recognized that he deserved most of the blame, but if there was one thing he'd never been able to do it was saying that he was sorry, and he didn't plan on partaking in any self-improvement now. He'd never been the _oh-I'll-change-my-ways-I-promise_ type.

He remembered when things turned to shit in his hands.

-

It was a bright May day and everyone outside lounging by the pool just wanted to go inside to the air conditioning while everyone inside in the air conditioning just wanted to go outside and lounge by the pool. A couple of energetic New Mutants were braving the summer heat and playing a game of mutant Frisbee just behind the fence when Lance pulled up in his jeep.

"Jamie!" he called out the open window. "Open the gate, it's me!"

"Kitty said she'd meet you out here!" one of the duplicates answered him. The Frisbee flew over his head and to another Jamie.

"Ah, hell." Lance turned to the console and rummaged about for his cell, finally finding it and holding down one on his speed dial. Two rings and then a familiar female voice, albeit not the one he'd been looking for.

"Hello?"

"Uh, hi, Rogue. It's Lance."

"Hang on." He held the phone to his ear, and a few moments later his girlfriend's roommate returned. "She's on her way down and sorry to keep you waitin'."

"Okay, thanks."

He ended the call and sat back in his seat. Not for the first time that summer he was glad that S.H.I.E.L.D. paid for his gas; it was too damn hot to turn off the car and lose the precious air conditioning that was surely the only boundary between himself and utter hell. He didn't really know how long was too long to wait for your girlfriend to appear at the front gate of the boarding school she attended, but the heat had already made it far too long for his tastes. It was a testament to his affection for Kitty that he hadn't thrown a temper tantrum and done something stupid. For example, the gate had not been knocked down by a seismic wave of pure frustration.

He turned up the stereo. His shaky 6-disc was playing a Wilco album he'd bought secondhand, but Lance, fully aware that the New Mutants were well within sight, made sure not to slip and start singing along lest the X-Brats might use that for future amusement and humiliation. Nonetheless, he couldn't help but close his eyes, and soon enough he was lost in thoughts of nothing in particular.

"You look like you've got something on your mind."

A smile crossed his face as his eyes opened to the sight of his girlfriend's head sticking through his passenger-side window. "Like they say, looks can be deceiving."

"Yeah. Well, right now, it looks like the door's locked, so don't mind me if I just slip on inside."

Lance watched as Kitty phased through the door and onto the seat. Even now, he still marveled at her ability. It was so subtle, yet also so useful. His mind flirted with thoughts of the Brotherhood house shaking on its cracked foundations and he felt a pang of jealousy that his own mutation was so damned useless. Well, not useless, he supposed, but it certainly wasn't versatile. As far as demolition went, he was an expert. It was the construction that he had problems with.

"So where are we going?" Kitty asked as she buckled her seatbelt. "Anywhere exciting?"

"I actually didn't have anything in mind," Lance admitted. He shifted the car into drive and began to turn the wheel. "I was hoping you'd have a bright idea."

"Lazy."

"Just a little bit, yeah."

He felt her warm lips on his cheek for a tantalizingly short second, and although he appreciated the gesture, he still despised the fact that feeling was ephemeral. It annoyed him that her lips might ever be more than a foot away from his at any time.

"My Lance, always so organized. What do you say we just go get some pizza? The guys aren't out tonight, are they?"

"Nah, they stayed home. Dunno where the hell Wanda went, but she's always been kinda weird like that."

"She's not weird," said Kitty. "Like, I bet it's tough for her to be the only girl in a big group of guys."

Lance chuckled and lightly began to apply pressure to the brake pedal. "It's not that she's the only girl in a big group of guys. It's that she's the only smart person in a big group of idiots."

"Oh, come on," Kitty laughed. "Todd's kind of smart."

"You were supposed to say _I'm_ smart."

He enjoyed their car rides almost as much as he enjoyed their dinners and movie dates and days in the park (not to mention all the crazier stuff they'd experienced together). There was something nice about being out on the road, the feeling rising up in his chest telling him that he could go anywhere now that he had a full tank of gas and a girl he loved in the passenger seat, and their jokes and stories came easy and true. Sometimes, in the helicopter on the way to some mission in God-knows-where, he'd think of Kitty – partially because she was nice to think about and partially because it helped him shift his focus from the vomit rising up in his throat – and grin when the thought occurred to him that she was _his_ girl, and his alone, and there wasn't anything that was ever going to change that so far as he could see.

He pulled into the last available parking space directly outside the restaurant. Kitty could have easily just gotten out of the car herself, or phased out, but they had their routine; he turned off the car, hopped out, and hurried to open the door for her. She smiled at him, as usual, and he bowed, offering her a polite, accented, "Madam."

"Sir," she returned.

He took her by the hand (he'd long since stopped caring if people thought he was a sap – even if they thought he was whipped, at least they knew she was _his_ girl, and that's all that mattered) and they headed inside, he yet again holding the door open for her.

There was a crowd inside, as he might've guessed by the lack of parking, and from the looks of things the Bayville High baseball team had won their playoff series and had brought out all their friends and family to celebrate. Lance didn't recognize anyone, except for a few of the older members of the posse, who had been in his class or the one above it in high school, and he realized that they probably had brothers and friends on the team. Thankfully none of Matthews' crowd was there, or none of Kelly's pathetic disciples. He really couldn't deal with a bunch of anti-mutant bigotry tonight.

"Okay, should we go half veggie and half meat lovers or do you want to share a cheese?" Kitty asked as they surveyed the menu.

"We had cheese last time," he noted. He faced her with a small smile. "Let's go all veggie."

She viewed him with a look of surprise. "You don't need to do that. I know you aren't a big green guy. You know I'm totally cool with that."

"What can I say? It's grown on me."

They ordered, and Lance took pride in the fact that he was actually able to pay. While he didn't always enjoy the obligations that his employment with S.H.I.E.L.D. entailed, he certainly did enjoy the fact that he was now able to pick up the tab when he took his girlfriend out to dinner. They got their fountain drinks and picked the last remaining booth by the window, and Lance took time to admire the view as he sat down. It was a perfect view for a perfect evening outside; now that he was shielded from the heat, he could appreciate the beauty of the quaint downtown district of Bayville, not to mention the incomparable beauty of the girl across from him.

"You're thinking sappy thoughts, aren't you?"

He shook his head and tried to be casual. "What do you mean?"

"You were looking at me with the doe eyes again."

"Oh damn."

Kitty laughed. "It's okay, I like the doe eyes. It's fine to be sappy, even if you'll never admit it. Girls like a sentimental guy. You don't always have to be Mr. Tough Guy."

"Don't say that – it makes me think of Wolverine." Lance shuddered. "That guy _still_ scares the living shit out of me."

"Stop saying that! Logan's really sweet once you get to know him."

"Yeah, I figure he's a regular doll once you get past the adamantium claws."

Kitty slapped him on the wrist, but lightly, and he grinned. She took his hand in hers, and he was thankful that he had a girlfriend with some sort of initiative: no matter what she said, he really did feel like a sappy idiot when he was the one to always grab her hand and not vice versa.

"What's taking so long?" he griped, his stomach rumbling. "I'm starved."

"It's been like two minutes. They're on their way, just be patient!"

"Easy for _you_ to say. You weren't the one waiting in the car while _someone_ –" here he placed a strategic cough "– was busy primping their hair or putting on lipstick or something just as girly."

"I wasn't acting 'girly,' so you know!" At his skeptical expression she glared. "I actually had just gotten back from overseeing a Danger Room session and was trying to give some of the New Mutants some pointers. They're totally clueless sometimes."

"Right." Lance took a long slurping gulp of his soda through his straw. "X-Geek."

"Hood rat."

That teasing insult might have been enough a few years prior to set him off, but he'd cooled off since his high school days (to some degree, at least). Instead, he just rolled his eyes. "Rather be a rat than a geek."

"Interesting choice."

It was at that point that a waiter brought by their pizza on a large pan.

"Careful of the metal, it's hot," said the waiter as he gently set the pan down on top of a stand on the table. "You both have plates?"

"Yes, thank you," said Kitty. "Is there any peprika or Parmesan?"

The waiter looked at the empty tray beside the stand. "It should've been on the table. Hang on, I'll go get you some."

"Thank you!"

If the waiter heard her he didn't acknowledge it. Lance inspected the pizza, tentatively deciding that it might actually be somewhat tasty. "Looks good."

"Very."

Lance smirked at her over the top of the melting cheese. "So, we got anything to toast to tonight? Anything to celebrate?"

There was a moment's hesitation on Kitty's part. He could tell that she was struggling with something, but as always, she gained her composure and gave him a genuine, if not very strong, smile.

"As you know, I was accepted into the University of Chicago."

"Yeah."

Too right he did know. He'd never seriously considered that Kitty might leave him for college, though. The world outside was just too different to deal with people like them. They didn't understand, and some socialist economics professors wouldn't understand any better than Kelly or Matthews did.

"I sent a letter back notifying them that I'll be enrolling for the fall semester, and I just got an e-mail confirming my enrollment."

Lance's smirk vanished. "You're joking."

"I'm dead serious," she said, voice firm. "I know it'll be tough, but it's something I want –"

"Tough? It'll be hell, Kitty! They don't understand us! I don't care what they say, they can't understand until they've lived like us, until they've seen what it's like to be able to tear up a whole damn city up because you had a headache and your dipshit roommate forgot the Advil!" Despite his anger, he tried to keep himself somewhat calm – it wouldn't be good to start even a slight tremor – and he was successful in lowering his voice. "They'll hate you. People shouldn't hate you."

"Someone's got to go out there and take all it," Kitty countered, but politely. "I'm, like, as qualified as anyone. Why not me?"

"Because! Because… you're you!" It didn't make sense, but Lance had never felt like anything made sense, anyhow. "It's not fair. It doesn't have to be you. You've sacrificed enough already for nothing. Everyone still hates us. Let 'em rot in hell for all I care. You've earned some relaxation time."

"I don't just want this for everyone else, Lance. I want this for me. I've wanted to go to Chicago since I was little. My dad dreamed of going there. I've got the chance to actually go. I _want_ to go. I _know_ it will be hard."

He surveyed her for a long moment. "You're serious, huh. Well." He attempted a smile. "I guess I can always take a car trip out to Chicago every few weeks. Good thing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s paying for my gas!"

His feeble stab at humor was not appreciated, apparently. Kitty had a strange look in her eyes. "That's not fair to you, Lance."

"Trust me, I've learned to deal with not fair. It's pretty much par the course for me. I've got it down pat."

"I don't care. I'm not going to do that to you."

"Then don't go."

"I have to go."

"No," he said, with force, "you really don't."

"I _want_ to go," she repeated.

"Then I'll go," he stated. "And if I don't move there, I'll go every other weekend. I'll drive. I'll do it, I swear."

"I know you will, Lance."

"It's no big deal," he insisted.

Kitty shook her head. "Yes, it _is._ I'm not going to do that to you. You shouldn't have to worry about coming out to Chicago for some girl that's already going to be stressed out over exams and her classmates being idiots and who's probably going to go totally spastic on you for no reason. You shouldn't have to worry about that."

"All right." He noticed for the first time that his teeth were gritted. "Then _don't go._"

"Lance. That's not what I'm saying."

"I _know_ what you're saying, but I think what you're saying is bullshit so I'm saying something else!"

"Lance, just think of it like we have a few more great, wonderful months. Right?" She tried to take his hand, but he withdrew it, instantly regretting his action when he saw the hurt expression on her face. "And then… you won't have me weighing you down. No responsibilities, right? You can focus on S.H.I.E.L.D. And it's not like I'll be dead or anything. We'll still be best friends and everything, right?"

He wanted to tell her that he _liked_ having some sort of responsibility, whether it was keeping a roof over everyone's heads when he was seventeen or organizing stupid criminal activities back in Northbrook or trying to make his girlfriend happier than he could ever hope to be, but the words wouldn't form, and he'd never been one for words to start with. He glared her straight in the eye and shook his head.

"Yeah," he spat. "We'll be bestest buddies. You can gossip to me about all the boys you like and I can give you relationship advice. It'll be just dandy, dontcha think?"

"Lance, stop being such a dick."

Her angry words stirred up something in him, and all of a sudden he saw his no-good father and that bitch Mystique in his mind's eye. "All right, as soon as you tell everyone to stop leaving me, because it's getting really old!"

"I'm not leaving you, Lance!"

"C'mon, Kitty, just admit that you're sick of me and get it over with. Break up with me."

Kitty's attention, however, was diverted. The waiter was standing in an awkward pose, holding up two glass containers.

The waiter gave them a feeble smile. "Peprika?"

-


	7. My First Kill

As usual, I'm sorry about the delay - I just got done with exams, so those kind of consumed my life.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

-

_My First Kill_

While still in high school, Kitty had discovered a love for physics, which Professor Xavier had regarded perfectly fitting considering the unique nature of her abilities. Indeed, while she had encountered antipathy among many of the student body of Chicago, her physics class was an exception: her professor in his opening lecture had singled her out in particular, referring to her enthusiastically as a "Copenhagen wet dream." She had been embarrassed, of course, especially when he'd enthused about the class studying her talents throughout the year and how they related to quantum mechanics. While initially she had been uncomfortable being the object of study of an entire physics department, she grew to enjoy her rare moment in the sun. Everyone still looked at her like she was different, but they didn't look down on her for once. Kitty might have gone as far to say they looked _up_ to her.

Despite her appreciation for her physics class, she was finding it extremely hard to try to study on a Sunday morning. Allison had gone out, but even the silence of the dorm room couldn't persuade Kitty to actually pay attention to her textbook. She'd read a few lines and then lose her focus. Logan would've been disappointed in her.

Her argument with Lance was stuck on a permanent loop in her head, and no matter what she did the loop wouldn't stop. They were so screwed up. Why couldn't they just be friends again? It wasn't that she didn't care about him. She _did._ Probably too much for her own good. Leaving behind her friends and her relationship with Lance had been the hardest thing about going to college, but things had just gotten to the point where she had to leave. She was so tired of being an X-Man. She'd just wanted to be Kitty again, and it was hard to just be Kitty when you lived in a house full of mutants.

And she couldn't ask Lance to move with her, although she would've if she could have. He would have in an instant, and that was the problem. Just because she needed space for herself shouldn't have meant that he'd leave all his friends and his job behind for her. S.H.I.E.L.D. frustrated her constantly, but on the whole she thought it had a great effect on Lance's life, and for the few months he'd been employed during their relationship he'd been happier than she'd ever seen him. She couldn't ask him to leave that.

Besides, she'd come back for good eventually. It was a long time to wait, but if they were really going to end up together in the long run, then what difference would four years make? She was eighteen years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. No need to make any huge choices yet.

An outsider might have found it amusing that Kitty had an underlying fear of commitment while Lance, the proverbial bad boy who lived on the edge, had no qualms whatsoever. Lance could unequivocally put his entire heart into something (or someone) and not question it once. Kitty had problems with that. Every day during their relationship she'd found herself growing more and more attached to Lance as he let slip small little details about himself that he'd hidden from her to start, the little pieces of information that defined really knowing someone. Her feelings for Lance had gotten to the point where she'd started to get scared. She hadn't even been out of high school, yet already she could see herself together with one guy for the foreseeable future. It was alternately the most thrilling and most terrifying thought in the world, although in this case, the terror had won.

It had been nearly two months since their argument and split-up, and the time away from Lance had done nothing to ease her feelings for him. If anything, it had backfired. She was getting sick of missing him every day, and more and more she had to stop herself from thinking about him during class. She felt like a complete sap, that this one guy could do this to her, and that in her time away from him she'd only fallen for him even more, but that was the nature of the beast.

Her experience at the university hadn't exactly made her forget about all the people she missed, either. She'd quickly found that it was equally as hard to be just Kitty in the middle of a bunch of humans as it had been in the middle of a bunch of mutants. The prejudice of those around her had been striking. She'd encountered it in Bayville, but at least there she hadn't been the only mutant around. She knew there were other mutants in Chicago, but she didn't personally know any of them, and while there were several people who had been quite kind to her – or those that had been in awe of her, like her physics professor – for the most part she felt isolated and alone. She had always been a fairly happy girl, and as such she was not used to prolonged periods of depression as she had experienced in Chicago.

It didn't help that Rogue told her all about the exploits at the Institute whenever they talked on the phone. Things had been "quiet" for the X-Men recently, but that was something like saying that a nuclear bomb wasn't "that explosive." While she loved talking to her friends back in Bayville – back home, she found herself thinking increasingly with each day – she felt a pang of envy every time they told her about something great they'd done. Kitty, on the other hand, felt that she had done nothing great at all during her time at the university, and every day she missed her old life as Shadowcat, when she actually felt like she could make a difference. That was then, though. She'd made a commitment, and she fully intended on honoring that commitment.

Her phone rang, interrupting her period of reflection. The annoying pop song that she'd chosen as her ring tone played as she tried to find the phone, finally locating it under a binder. She picked it up and answered it, "Hello?"

"Kitty! It's Pietro."

"Pietro?" she asked. "What're you calling for?"

"Hang on one second." She could hear him say something in the background, and what he said caught her interest. "Okay, back."

"Did you just say Hellfire Club? Are you in a cab or something?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm in a cab. I didn't say anything, though."

"You are the worst liar in the history of mankind."

"Okay, I did," he admitted, "but don't tell Fury. He'd have my ass if he knew. Anyway, I can't talk long, your dear Lancelot will be back in a second, he just forgot his I.D. upstairs and had to go get it. I just wanted to tell you that I think you should come over again, later tonight."

Kitty snorted. "Yeah, last time was great."

"I'm serious. If you guys end this weekend on a bad note, I'm going to go insane, because Lance is going to be even moodier than he has been the last few months. I can't deal with that, Pryde."

"Okay, _Maximoff_."

"Kitty." For the first time since she'd known him, Pietro was actually pleading. "Come see him. I know he's an idiot, but he wants you to, even if he won't say it. I mean, I don't want to see Lance like he's been recently, both because it's annoying and because he's practically part of my family."

"Maybe I'll come visit you at the Hellfire Club," she said, full well knowing his reaction.

"No!" Pietro exclaimed. "No, that's a terrible idea. We're working. Whatever you do, don't come there. I'll call you or something after we're done."

"Fine," she said. "But what are you guys doing there, anyways? Isn't that for corporate executives and stuff?"

"We're working," he said again. "Don't worry about it. Okay, gotta go, see Lance. Bye."

He hung up. Kitty tossed the phone on the lower bunk bed and leaned back in her chair. She wasn't sure what to think of Pietro's request. Part of her just wanted to tell him to go to hell, and to take Lance with him, but that hardly seemed fair to Pietro. He was irritating and self-serving, but in this situation, at least, she thought that he truly did mean well and was looking out for his friend.

Kitty emitted a groan. They were _so_ screwed up.

-

_How many mutants does it take to screw in a light bulb?_

Forty-seven, Kurt had said with that stupid grin on his face; one to screw in the light bulb and the rest to play Mutant Ball out back while Logan wasn't looking.

Kitty thought it was probably the worst joke she'd ever heard, and she told Kurt just that, but he laughed in her face. As she stood at the top of the steps overlooking the pool, though, surveying the entire area of the grounds behind the mansion, she was reminded of that stupid joke. The whole student body had set to making this the grandest graduation party in the history of any high school, one that put Rogue and Scott and Jean's to shame. In between mutant games of tag and hide and seek, everyone had dressed up the yard as if the president was the guest of honor, not a couple of nerdy self-professed X-Geeks.

"Ah, if it isn't the graduates themselves!" Professor Xavier beamed at the outgoing seniors as they walked out to the pool, freshly anointed with party hats on their heads and cheap togas over their clothes that looked more like ponchos than ancient Roman sashes. "How does it feel to be part of the real world?"

"Man, Professor, I think I've already had enough of the real world," Bobby remarked. His eyes lit up as they grazed over one of the many tables of food. "Hey, is that a chocolate fountain? Count me in!"

Bobby rushed to the fountain, followed by Amara, and Xavier chuckled. "I can vaguely recall what it was like to be young and have a metabolism that could actually keep pace with my own foolish actions."

"I only wish my metabolism was as fast as Bobby's or Kurt's," Kitty said, both jokingly and wistfully.

She got a cup of punch and stood around talking with some of the other students for a long while. After a brief conversation with Jamie she felt a rough pat on her shoulder, and she smiled before turning around.

"Good job, kid."

"Trust me, Logan, it's really not that hard to graduate from Bayville High School," she replied, only half-kidding.

"Yeah, well it's better than Rockhead and his friends have done, ain't it?" grunted Logan.

"He's not a _rockhead_, Logan."

"Huh. Coulda fooled me."

"I think you'd really like him if you got to know him. You're both big tough guys. You could do all sorts of manly stuff. I steal some of your car magazines and take them over to him, he loves them. You guys should set up a play date where you just mess around with one of the cars."

Logan pried off the top of a bottle of water. "You're the one that's been taking my magazines?"

"Not just me. Sam, too."

"Hey!" cried Sam, who stood only a few feet away. "Don't bring me down with you!"

"Aw, shut it, Rockhead, I don't give a damn." Logan took a deep gulp of his water. "You can get that stuff for free online anyways."

The corner of Kitty's mouth twitched. "I thought Lance was Rockhead?"

"Everyone's Rockhead to me."

"Coming from the guy with a metal skull?"

"Yeah, but I never said I _wasn't_ Rockhead, did I, half pint?"

"Whatever you say, Logan," said Kitty, affecting a wave of the hand for further emphasis. "All I know is you should really give Lance a chance. He's been working really hard for S.H.I.E.L.D. It's changed him."

She noticed Logan flinch, and it was soon obvious that the elder mutant was distracted by the passing form of one Erik Lensherr. While the former terrorist had been teaching at the school even before his old Brotherhood had been commissioned by S.H.I.E.L.D. to form the Freedom Force, his presence still disturbed several members of the staff and faculty. Logan seemed to be particularly perturbed by the presence of his old nemesis, but that was to be expected of someone with an adamantium skeleton.

Lensherr nodded at the two of them cordially before striking up conversation with Professor Xavier, who was completely at ease with his old friend. Logan relaxed, but just barely.

"I think he's changed, too, Logan," Kitty said quietly.

"I hate to say it, but I think you're right." Logan crushed his water bottle and threw it into a recycling bin. "Still, he makes me uneasy. But I guess if Magneto can change for the better, then some punks from your high school can, too. I'm still not giving either of them the benefit of the doubt."

"I didn't think you would, really."

"You know me too well. Usually I've sliced up people once they get to know my tendencies as well as you do." It was a good thing Kitty was used to Logan's odd sense of humor. Although he might not have been joking, on second thought, which was why his sense of humor was so odd – it was impossible to tell if he was being serious or not. "How's Rocky taking the whole Chicago thing?"

Kitty frowned. "Ignoring it, for the most part. He's been worse over the past two weeks, even moodier than usual, but he's also had a lot of tough work. Fury's increasing the pressure on them. I just hope he can relax enough so that we can spend some time together tomorrow and then he can see me off the day after."

"Where is he now?"

"No clue. He was supposed to be back from his mission, but sometimes they run behind. It depends if they… get caught up."

"Don't think about that, Kitty," Logan warned. "Your boy and his gang may be a bunch of rockheads, but they know how to take care of themselves."

"Yeah, I know."

She took time to fill up her cup with more punch.

"Are you excited about Chicago, at least?" asked Logan.

"Oh my God, I'm _so_ excited." She was glad for the change of subject. "I mean, it's kind of scary and stuff, but I mean, what's life without a little adventure and risk? If I've learned anything during my time with the X-Men it's that, I think. I know it's not going to be easy, and I know there are going to be some real idiots and everything, but I think it'll be fun, too."

"Good. You're gonna do great, kid. There's no doubt in my mind."

"Thanks, Logan." She paused and stared at the glass in her hand. "I'm really going to miss everyone, though."

Logan grinned, or he grinned as much as he could. "As long as you miss me most. I'm the best instructor you ever had, isn't that right?"

"Oh, _definitely_. I especially liked when I learned what to do when I'm in a knife fight with a violent mob."

"What can I say, it's an essential life skill."

"Kitty?"

She turned and immediately let out an involuntary yelp of joy. "Mom! Dad! Oh my God!"

She ran over and hugged her mother first, and then her beaming father.

"Nice party," commented her father. At fifty-four, Alexander Pryde was even shorter than Logan while not quite as muscular, but he was still an imposing figure in his own unique fashion. "I don't suppose there's any beer, is there?"

"I might be able to hook you up, if you want," Logan said, roguish smirk intact.

"Dad, this is Mr. Logan," Kitty explained. Her father viewed Logan with a look of caution. "I think you've met him before."

"Once or twice, I think."

"Yeah, he's… uh, the phys ed. teacher here. Kind of."

"I'm making sure your daughter can get in a fight with ten 250-pound professional assassins and kick each every one of their asses, if that makes my role clearer." Her father's face didn't twitch. "I'm a self-defense expert, basically. I do other stuff too, but that's my specialty. Lemme tell ya, Kitty here's one of our star pupils. If she comes back next summer for more work, I think she'd be on a black-belt level in three different forms of martial arts."

"Oh."

"That's nice," said Kitty's mother.

"He keeps us safe," Kitty said.

"I've got nothing wrong with that, I guess." There was an uneasy pause until her father spoke again. "Didn't you say something about beer?"

"Yeah, we've got a cooler for all the parents. Lemme show you where it is."

"I'll be back in a minute, Kitty," her dad assured her.

"Okay, okay." Kitty turned to her mother as her father followed Logan off to the beer cooler. "You know, you could've called me and let me know you were here! I would've gone and gotten you from the airport."

"We called you no less than eight times, sweetie. Your phone must be on silent." Kitty realized with a hint of embarrassment that this was true. "And I know you have the ability to drive through walls, but even so, we've heard too much about your adventures with driving to really be comfortable having you drive us around!"

Kitty flicked her hair back and protested, "I'm not that bad! Really! Everyone just embellishes that story until it seems like I'm the worst driver in the history of the world or something."

"I'm sure they do, Kitty. But we feel fine calling a cab."

"Whatever." A thought twisted through Kitty's mind. "You haven't heard anything about my cooking, have you?"

"No." For the briefest moment Kitty felt a glimmer of triumph rise up in her chest, but her mother continued talking and all hopes were extinguished. "But you tried to get me to teach you how to cook when you were thirteen, remember? Your dad had to take sick leave from work for three days after he ate your cookies."

"Total faker. If you ask me, he was just looking for an excuse to take a few days off."

Soon Hank and Scott gathered everyone for a good old-fashioned game of no-powers volleyball. Kitty didn't play – she didn't feel like changing into a bathing suit – but the game soon devolved from a regular game of volleyball into an intense battle of mutant volleyball. Jamie would spawn a duplicate whenever the ball was out of reach; Kurt teleported to spike balls before they'd even crossed the net; and Bobby actually iced other players in place in the pool, while Amara was busy undoing her male counterpart's handiwork. Kitty's parents were equal parts apprehensive and fascinated, although she thought they respected that while the mutants knew how to have fun, they also knew where to draw the line and how to use their powers responsibly.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the party was a raging success, but as much as she was enjoying the entertainment, Kitty couldn't help but feel as if the whole ordeal was dragging on for far too long. Perhaps it was because she glanced every few minutes at the back door, expecting someone to be standing there, or at the fence, expecting a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued vehicle to be barreling through the wood with her favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent at the wheel. But whenever the door opened it was just another one of the Xavier Institute students coming back out after going inside for some reason or another, and the fence looked as strong and whole as ever with no out-of-control jeeps visible on the horizon.

"I thought your boyfriend was supposed to be here," her father commented as the party began to wind down. "I was looking forward to meeting him again."

"He _was_ supposed to be here."

"Hm. Well, I bet he's probably on time for your dates. Just not the other important stuff, huh?"

Her temple drummed an angry beat. "Dad, just be quiet. You have no idea what you're talking about. Lance is a great guy. I don't know where he is, but he had work today, and he's probably caught up."

"He has a job?"

"Oh, shut up!"

"Let's both just settle down, all right?" her mother interjected. "I'm sure he has… excellent reasons for not being here."

"He does. He works for S.H.I.E.L.D."

Her father wore a blank stare. "I've heard that name before, but I have no idea what it stands for."

"It stands for the Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate," she explained. "They're the people that helped us out with Apocalypse. Lance and all his friends pretty much saved Wanda and me after we went after Magneto, and Director Fury offered Lance and Wanda and the rest of the Brotherhood jobs as a task force for S.H.I.E.L.D. when they integrated mutants into the Directorate earlier this year. So basically I guess his job is to save the world."

She knew that while Freedom Force did deal with many matters intrinsic to national security, especially now that they had earned Fury's trust after several effective months on the job, saying that they saved the world was probably taking it a bit too far. There hadn't been any serious global threats since Apocalypse, but still, "saving the world" just had a better ring to it.

"Hm." Her father was noncommittal, as always. "I'll reserve judgment for when I finally talk to this Lance again. _If_ I ever talk to him again. It sure doesn't look like he's going to show up for your graduation party at any rate."

Kitty was beyond caring about her dad's not-so-subtle malice towards her boyfriend. She was just glad that he hadn't brought up the subject of Lance's lack of a high school degree.

At one point Professor Xavier called everyone together, and the students and few parents formed a semi-circle facing the staff, who stood in front of the pool. Xavier sat with Magneto on one side and Scott and Jean on the other. Hank and Storm stood behind Professor Xavier and Logan stood somewhere off to the side, although still with the staff. Rogue and Kurt stood together, a step away from Logan.

"Well, I know everyone's tired, but I thought I'd just say a few words." Professor Xavier folded his hands in his laps and smiled. "When I started this school, I only dreamed that it would grow to this size, and I never could have dreamt that I'd be blessed with such students. But here we are, for the fourth straight year, celebrating the graduation of yet another class of X-Men. It makes me feel rather old, to tell the truth."

A scattering of laughs. Xavier pressed on.

"We've gone through a lot over the past few years – more than I could ever have, or should ever have, asked of any of you. But whatever I asked of you, you did it, and you did it well. I did not intend for you to have to face such danger, but I realize that we live in a dangerous world, and you performed more than admirably. Some of you will join the staff here and teach those who are going through the same difficult transition you have gone through. Some of you will choose to join the full-time X-Men and risk your lives so that others may live in peace. Some of you –" Kitty was almost positive his gaze turned to her "– will go to college and join the world at large. Whatever you do, I'm sure you will be more than successful, and more than anything, I am proud to have called you X-Men."

He stopped, but no one clapped or whistled or said anything. Sensing an awkward situation, Professor X chuckled. "Honestly, I hope that wasn't _too_ much like last year's speech. Everyone seems to have gone to sleep!"

He received a good degree of laughter at this, and so the party concluded. While most of the younger students filed inside, Kitty felt obligated to offer to help clean up, and the staff gratefully accepted her help.

"Where's Lance?" Rogue asked in her Southern drawl as the pair disassembled a table and lifted it up to carry it inside.

"He had a mission, but he was supposed to be here."

"Oh." Rogue didn't flinch as Kitty turned them intangible and guided the table through the wall of the storage shed. "I'm sure he's fine, Kitty."

"That's what Logan said."

"Well, if Logan said it, it must be true. Logan has no sympathy whatsoever."

Kitty's eyes lit up and she smirked. "So you were just saying that out of sympathy?"

They set down the table inside and had just started to phase outside, Rogue's gloved hand in Kitty's, when Kitty felt her pocket vibrating. She stuck her hand in and retrieved her phone, frowning when she saw who was calling. She put the phone to her ear and tried not to sound too irritated. "Yes, Lance?"

"Kitty?" Rogue backed off to give Kitty some space, but neither moved for the next table. "I'm not too late, right?"

"The party's over, Lance. It would've been nice if you could've been here, oh, five or six hours ago."

She was expecting for him to swear or curse or scream or do something, but she noticed that his voice was lacking any sort of energy to it at all. "Oh. I'm… God, I'm out behind the back gate, near the pool. Where are you?"

"We're out here. Hang on, I'll go through the fence and walk you in."

She ended the call and gave Rogue a meaningful look.

"Don't be too harsh on him," Rogue warned her. "You don't know what he may have been through today."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll be right back."

She ran past the trees and to the fence, phasing straight through. Lance's jeep was parked by the curb outside the outer fence of the institute, and he was leaning up against the passenger side door.

"Sorry I'm late."

"Yeah, I figured. Come on, it's a long walk back. I ran and it took me a while."

She grabbed him by the hand and led him through the fence. There was still a considerable distance through the trees to the pool, and they walked in silence for a short while.

"How was your mission?" she asked, out of civility rather than genuine interest.

Lance grunted in response.

"Okay. You don't want to talk. I get it."

"Kitty."

"No, it's fine, Lance. Let's just mope while we walk, I love it when we do that."

"Kitty, stop."

She could see the vague outlines of Rogue, Scott, and then, further off, Logan and her parents, but they were far out of earshot and consumed by darkness. "What is it, Lance?"

"I don't want you to go to college," he said.

"Excuse me, I thought you said that you didn't want me to pursue my own ambitions and dreams." She tried to control herself, but for all of Logan's meditation techniques she'd been taught she couldn't do it. "Oh, that's fine, Lance. That's just great. Why didn't I think of it earlier?"

"I can't do this right now, Kitty. I don't want to fight again. I just can't deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the idiots I live with and you leaving all at the same time."

"Like I don't have a ton on my plate? Yeah, Lance, you've got a job. Welcome to the real world!"

"You know _nothing_ about the real world!" he growled, and if Kitty hadn't known Lance so intimately she would've been frightened. "You come from your middle-class happy household with parents that loved you and actually gave a damn, and you tell _me_ welcome to the real world? I've lived in the real world, Kitty, and the real world is full of a bunch of junkie parents who beat their kids when they've had a bad panic attack. The real world is full of suicide and poor people and shit that we read about in school but you never though would actually happen. The real world is a bunch of crappy foster homes all in a row where the foster parents are only in it for the money! People die in the real world, Kitty. It's not like your holy X-Men where the good guys always win and the bad guys never really meant it."

"I'm so sick of you bringing up my parents every time something doesn't go your way!" she spat back, taking a step forward. "Yeah, you had a crappy childhood, I get that. But how about you tell me about it when I ask you? How come you only ever bring it up when we get into a fight, as if that guilt trip just proves that you're right? I'm not going to be guilt tripped into anything, Lance. And I _know_ about the real world. I know what it's like to have people hate you, where everyone you know is afraid of you! Even before I was an X-Man, I was a loser back in high school, I had no friends. So don't talk to me like I'm some naïve kid, okay?"

Lance laughed and shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? I cannot deal with this right now, I really can't."

"Tell me, Lance! Tell me what it is I don't get."

He said nothing.

"Tell me!" she repeated.

He looked at her long and hard. She began to think that she wasn't looking at big bad Lance Alvers any more, but instead a lost ten-year-old who couldn't understand why he wasn't living with his mom and dad like he used to. But then again, maybe those two had always been one and the same.

"You asked about my mission," he said. "You really want to know how it went?"

"Yes," Kitty replied, in spite of the rising feeling of foreboding in her chest. "Yes."

"All right. Let me tell you how it went, even though Fury would have my ass if he found out about this. We were supposed to do a raid on a mutant terrorist base in Argentina and abduct their leader, but the tech guys didn't do their job, and so the base still had all its security up and running, so naturally Fred tripped the alarm. But our intel was also crap, and they had much larger forces than we'd ever thought they did, and from there just about everything went to hell. There was gunfire everywhere, and we figured out it wasn't just a mutant base; they had tons of human lackies."

He took a breath.

"All right. So we're trying to deal with all the mutants, first off, and Wanda's just going insane. So is Pyro, but it's still not enough. Fred's fine, he's a freaking tank, but Pietro isn't able to disarm the machine guns quick enough and Todd gets hit. We thought he was dead at first, but it turns out he just got shot in the arm. Todd was supposed to infiltrate with Pietro as the rest of us took on the base, but that's also gone to hell, so Pietro takes me, but inside the base they're waiting for us. One of their mutants is a telikinetic and she floats Pietro so he's useless, and just when I think we're royally screwed Pyro torches the whole place and takes…" Lance stopped. "He takes care of most of them. But one of them's still there, this small skinny kid. He's got a shotgun, and he's staring at my face like the idiot that he is, and he just looks at me as he points the barrel at my face."

Kitty knew what was coming before he said it, but it didn't make things any easier.

"I know he's an idiot kid, and I know he's probably got a mom and dad that'll miss him, but I grab my pistol and he hesitates so I shoot him in the face. Blood goes everywhere." Lance's voice cracked. "He's dead. Wanda comes in and we call for back-up but it takes a while so we hide out in this sewer for a while before the 'copter comes in. Todd wakes up, starts screaming, but he's all right. Everything was just terrible. I don't even know."

"Lance…"

"I killed someone," he said. He didn't even know she was there any more. "I killed him. I've never done that before. Fury told us we'd end up killing someone at some point, but I never believed him. And when we left, I should've just put my foot down and sent the whole damn building to the ground, but I didn't. I freaked out. I just freaked out. If I do that again, I could end up getting us killed. All of us. Not just my sorry ass."

"Lance, you didn't freak out. You were shocked. It's understandable. Fury expects too much out of you."

"No, he really doesn't, and that's what really gets me. He expects us to be perfect, but it's not like he's crazy or anything. If we're not perfect, people get killed. Even if we _are_ perfect, people get killed, but hopefully we're not the ones sent to an early grave." Kitty sensed a darkness in Lance's voice, a darkness she'd only barely detected at other points. "I shot him in the nose. His nose just went to pieces. I sat there like an idiot. And then since I'm such an idiot I nearly get all my friends killed, too. I pretty nearly became a serial killer. I'm kinda hoping I don't make this whole kill-then-freak-out routine a habit."

"Listen, they can't expect you to just _kill_ people." She took a step toward him and reached for his face with her hand, but he flinched and she withdrew. "If you think you can't handle… killing people, then maybe you should quit."

"I thought you got mad at me when I told you to give up your hopes and dreams."

"I didn't know S.H.I.E.L.D. was the job of your dreams. I didn't think you would enjoy being a fed."

"I don't think it is, but it's close enough," he said, and it was almost a confession. "I know what we're doing, it's not always easy, but most of the time it's right, and most of the time we're saving people in some way. I never thought I'd be the hero type, but S.H.I.E.L.D… we're not really heroes, you know? We do the shady stuff, but I know it's right in the end. We're the muscle, but we also have to think on our feet. It's a challenge."

"Lance."

"You know what the worst part is?" he asked. "The worst part is that I know deep inside of me that killing that guy was the right thing to do. Maybe because I killed him he can't kill someone else or do any other bad shit. I know that he would've killed _me_, and I'm damn glad that I did it for that reason. But it gets at me, that I just know that killing him was the right thing to do and that the world's better off without a scumbag like him. It just is disgusting to think that I'm a killer now and the world is better for it. It kinda goes against everything that we've ever been taught, but it's right, I think, although it doesn't make me feel any better about shooting half the bastard's face off."

Kitty wanted to say something, anything to comfort him, but she was clueless as to what. She hated this feeling of frustration, this inability to even talk to her boyfriend of two years.

His shaded eyes found her own. "Don't go."

"I can't," she said. "This is what I want. I need to get out of here and stop being Shadowcat for a while. I need to be Kitty Pryde again."

"You can't run from what you are, Kit," he said. The statement was both honest and foreboding. "The moment you fell through that ceiling you became Shadowcat. You can't have Kitty without Shadowcat or Shadowcat without Kitty or any of that. Your powers are part of who you are. You think I wouldn't like to run away sometimes? But it's just useless. At the end of the day I can still make earthquakes and you can still walk through walls."

"I need to get away. I need to be more than my powers for once. I know that they're part of me, but they shouldn't, like, define me."

"And you say _I'm_ immature," Lance scoffed. "The outside world won't let you be more than your powers. I've been trying to run away from my powers forever, but now I realize that that's just who I am, and I'm embracing it."

"Huh. You know what, this really sounds like another speech you've given me, although I think _that_ ended with you trying to use me to steal test scores for you and your dropout buddies."

"This isn't the same. I was a dumb kid then. But now I realize that a lot of that was true. I tried to stay away but Mystique and Magneto and Apocalypse just kept dragging me back in, and I've gotten to the point where I know that my powers are who I am. It's not all of who I am, but that's all anyone else is gonna think. I'm done fighting it."

Kitty crossed her arms as she regarded him. "Good for you, Lance, but if you don't mind, I'm going to try to see if maybe I can be just Kitty Pryde again."

"All right, fine," he growled. "Maybe there still is a little Kitty Pryde in you. Maybe you're still a naïve freshman inside. But if you want to try finding yourself or whatever, you can do it without me."

Somehow this didn't feel like any other fight. Somehow it felt more final, and maybe, Kitty thought, that's because it was. They didn't have their future ahead of them. They had a couple days, at most, and this fight really could be the end.

"I don't want to, but if you want to end this I'll go on without you."

"If I remember right, you were the one who decided to end this. Just be friends. If we're that any more."

"Oh, I'm just going to go inside," Kitty said, her voice surprisingly emotionless. "Goodbye, Lance. Maybe we can talk when you're done growing up."

"Hm, maybe." She felt his eyes on her as she started to walk away. "So long, Pretty Kitty. Have a nice life!"

The emotionless façade promptly ended. She couldn't help but cry, and she hated it. She hated that she felt so weak, that this idiot boy had reduced her to a sobbing wreck, so she held her head high and tried to walk with some poise.

"You all right, half pint?"

Logan was standing near the hammock. Kitty nodded and walked past him, although she thought she noticed his eyes move to where Lance had been standing. Rogue noticed her and began to follow after her as Kitty stormed into the house and up the stairs. She walked straight through the door and crashed facedown on the bed. Moments later she felt a gloved hand on her own, but Rogue said nothing.


	8. My License to Kill

Another important chapter, although it's really another transitional chapter. The next three chapters after this will conclude the story with a healthy dose of action. Thanks for the reviews and comments. I've got a Lance-centric one-shot sitting on my computer waiting for completion; after this story wraps up I'll probably post that, if anyone's interested.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evolution and I'm sure as hell not making any profit off of this.

* * *

_My License to Kill_

_-  
_

He didn't know what to do, but that was nothing new. When he was eight, he'd stumbled into the garage as his dad was working on the old station wagon that sometimes one of his parents would drive after having a six-pack of beer and a joint or two.

"Whatcha doing?"

His old man pushed out from under the car and looked at him. Dominic Petros was tall and athletic, with big shoulders left over from his days as a high school fullback. He kept his raven hair short and cropped, and he kept himself clean-shaven on the days that he actually remembered to shave. His eyes were piercing, and he had the unique ability to make his son feel puny and small, like a bug about to be stepped on by an indifferent sixth grader in the school playground.

"I'm working on the car." Dominic was from Crete, but he'd moved to New York when he was four years old, and he had inherited not the accent of his parents but the accent of his fellow citizens. "Do you want to see? You can help."

"Okay."

"First, can you grab the toolbox? I'm going to need to swap out in a second."

Lance lifted the large black box and jumped down the stairs. He set it down next to his father and waited.

"The tires are dirty," he blurted out.

Dominic laughed. "Yeah, they are. You can help me clean them later if you want."

"Okay."

Dominic pushed back under the car and disappeared. Lance stood, unsure what to do, and unwilling to do anything that might aggravate his father.

After a while Dominic cursed.

"Damn it! Stupid…" A grunt. "Can you hand me the Phillips-head?"

Lance opened the tool box and looked around. "Uh…"

"The Phillips-head."

He knew it was no good asking what a Phillips-head was, so he just grabbed a long screw and placed it in his father's outstretched hand. Dominic's fingers ran over the grooves of the screw, and he pushed out from under the car.

"Does this look like a Phillips-head to you?" he'd growled. "God damn it, you don't know anything, do you? Do you ever know what to do?"

Tears began to sting his eyes, and he was far too smart to cry in front of Dominic. His father retrieved a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and paid no more attention to his son.

"Go cry to your mother." A small flame rose from the lighter. "You know I don't want to see your blubbering."

Now, more than thirteen years later, Lance felt like that eight-year-old kid, alone and disappointed with no idea what to do next. He knew he was just wallowing in his own pity, but his whole life was one letdown after another, and nothing he did ever seemed to do anything to stop – or hell, even slow down – that cycle.

He didn't bother watching her walk away. He didn't need to watch to know she was gone, probably for good, and that was the end of that. Once again he'd screwed himself over.

"Hey! Rockhead!"

If there was anything that could've possibly gotten his attention in that moment of self-pity and self-loathing, it was an angry Canadian with an adamantium skeleton swiftly walking up to him with long menacing strides.

"Oh Jesus," Lance muttered, wondering if he should call the rest of the guys and say goodbye. _To Wanda I give my stress ball… to Fred I give my half-eaten sandwich in the refrigerator… to Todd I give my bar of soap… to Pietro I give my stash of sugar-free gum… and to Pyro I give nothing, the crazy bastard._

"Yeah, you'd better say your prayers!" Wolverine growled. He grabbed Lance by the collar of his shirt and pushed him against a tree. "Just what the hell do you think you're doin'? I don't know what exactly you did, Alvers, but I don't appreciate punks like you makin' my students cry, okay?"

"I didn't –" Lance struggled for breath as Wolverine's forearm pressed into his throat "– I didn't want to make her cry. I'm not in great mood myself, you know?"

"Really?" Lance grimaced as Wolverine pulled him away from the tree and tossed him to the ground. It was only some slight comfort to know that the X-Man could have been a lot rougher if he'd wanted to really hurt him. "Why don't you tell me about it."

It was a command, not a question. Several months under Nick Fury had taught Lance how to take orders, even if he sometimes grumbled about them under his breath.

"All right? You want to know what happened?" Lance unsteadily got to his feet and dusted off his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued pants in a vain attempt to preserve some shred of his dignity. "Your girl came and accosted me for being late to this stupid party, ignoring the fact that I'd just been risking my ass on some dangerous mission to God-knows-where for our noble government. So I guess I got kinda irritated at her."

Wolverine was unimpressed. "And that's it. Nothing else."

"That was the gist of it, yeah."

"Alvers, I've been dealing with punks like you before you were even a twinkle in your mommy and daddy's eyes. Long before that, actually. Don't try to lie with me. Even my students have trouble doing that. I should know, Kitty lies to me nearly every time she's going out for a date with you."

"Well, don't worry about that. I don't think we're going on many more dates after this."

"Probably not." Well, it may not have been what Lance wanted to hear, but at least Wolverine was honest. "But if you don't tell me right now, so help me God, Rocky, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to control myself. I've got a nasty little temper."

"I'm telling you the truth, you ass –"

_Snikt._

"Really?" asked Wolverine as he held up a fist, his claws glittering in the moonlight. "Well excuse me if I just want to make sure. One last time, kid. What the hell happened?"

"All right, I'll tell you! Just put away the freaking claws already."

"Fair enough."

With another metallic noise the claws retracted, and Lance let out a deep breath. He hadn't noticed that he'd backed up against a tree in his nervousness.

"So."

"All right, all right. Anyways, we had a really bad mission. Really terrible. Our intel was shit, the alarms weren't taken out, and the place we were raiding had a lot more people than we thought they did. Mutants, too. So it just becomes a complete crapshoot, bullets are flying everywhere, Todd's hit, and we all think we're going to die. We're lucky to get out of there alive."

"So you had a bad mission. It happens. There's something you're not telling me."

"Jesus, I'm not even lying! Human lie detectors I can deal with. How can you tell I'm not telling you something? I thought X and Grey were the only telepaths around here."

"Don't need to be a telepath," Wolverine said. "It's all in your face. I hope you don't end up on some mission that requires you to lie a bunch or fabricate an identity. You're way too uptight. Any decent security would have you in a second. You'd be bleeding from every hole in your body, and they'd make a few more just to be safe."

"Ugh, that's disgusting, man."

"It's true. I've seen it before."

"I really didn't need to know that," Lance replied, ignoring the new sickness in his stomach. "But we've had some of those missions and I've done fine."

Again, Wolverine was unimpressed. Tough crowd. "You haven't gone up against the best yet. You'll get your ass whipped when you do."

"Thanks."

"Just being honest." Wolverine shifted his weight back on his heels and crossed his arms, but his eyes stayed on Lance. "Stop stalling. Tell me what happened."

"Okay." Lance, who had been avoiding the gaze of the older man for so long, found Wolverine's eyes and stared into them, almost defiantly. "Can I ask you something? How many people have you killed?"

To his surprise, Wolverine answered, "Enough. Why?"

"Do you remember your first kill?"

"Huh." Wolverine observed him for several seconds, as if looking for something, but eventually looked away, and Lance couldn't tell if he found what he was looking for. "To be honest, I've had some memory problems. I'm… a little older than I look, to put it bluntly, and the further back I go the foggier it gets. But I remember some of my first kills. I was in the army for a while. At the beginning I was real hesitant, didn't want to hurt anyone, but after a while I realized it was necessary. Sometimes you lose control of yourself and you kill when you shouldn't. I've done that. Now I try to keep my cool, avoid lethal damage, but you can't always avoid it. I don't remember my first kill, but I know the feeling."

"The feeling?" Lance asked. His throat was dry.

"The guilt. After it's done you realize that you've just ended someone's life, that that person's never coming back. You start thinking about their family and their friends. You wonder if they had a mom and dad, or if they had a baby girl at home." Wolverine's face is nearly indiscernible in the darkness. "And the guilt leads to doubt. You start wonderin' if maybe you made a mistake. You start askin' yourself if maybe there was another way. You start thinking that you were a little too trigger-happy."

"Do you ever think that maybe it isn't necessary at all? That it's always a mistake?"

"Of course. But I always end up deciding that there are times when it's the only option. If someone's threatening your life or the lives of your friends and family. There have been times where I've killed and it was because I was told to, or because I thought it would make a positive impact on the world. I've stopped that. It's a last measure, I think, but there's no doubt in my mind that sometimes it's necessary." Wolverine let out a bitter laugh, and Lance thought it might have been the most disturbing sound he'd ever heard. "But look at me. I was born to be a killer. I might be a little biased in my thinking."

"Yeah."

The humor vanished from the air. "So. You killed someone."

"Yeah." Lance tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it just wouldn't go away. "He was standing over me with a shotgun and just looking at me and I shot him straight in the nose. He was dead before he hit the ground."

"It sounds like it was pretty necessary to me. Either you kill him or he kills you."

"Yeah, but then I wonder if I could've avoided it. I wonder if maybe I hadn't been so _stupid_, then maybe I wouldn't have been in that situation at all, and maybe neither of us would've had to end up dead. I can't help thinking that there's parents out there waiting for their son to call but he can't because some punk kid from New York shot his nose off."

"The doubt," said Wolverine. "God, do I know the doubt. But it's good that you're doubting, Rocky. You need to learn from this one screwed-up mission. Listen, you all are a bunch of kids, you're going to make mistakes. Especially in life-or-death situations. You need to learn from this mission. You need to learn how next time you can be better prepared, or how your team can be better prepared, so you don't have to kill someone to save your own life. I know it seems like a lot to deal with, but it's the only thing you can do. S.H.I.E.L.D… I don't always agree with Fury and his lackeys, but I think they're doing a bunch of good on the whole, even if they do some bad too. You and your friends need to learn from each mission, or else you may end up carrying someone home in a body bag. I should know. I've seen friends die in front of me."

Lance didn't know what to say. He could only listen.

"You need to learn all this stuff, but you can't become – what's the word? – desensitized. You need to be efficient and objective during this missions, but you also can't do that and lose who you are as a person. There are times where I was nothing but a killing machine. I was Wolverine, and it got to the point where I nearly ended up killing Logan. You can't do that. You gotta want to be the best not out of some selfish desire… you've got to want to be the best because if you're that much better, that's another life saved. You get where I'm goin'?"

"Yeah, I get where you're going," Lance replied, finally. "You sound like you've thought about this a lot."

"Ain't that the truth. I'm pretty much the world's foremost expert on death and killing. Of course, I don't tell any of the parents that when they come to visit their kids."

Lance chuckled. "Yeah."

"Yeah. I think I've got a better idea of what happened, but let me just get this straight." Wolverine continued the interrogation, but Lance did not feel as uncomfortable for some reason. This whole conversation had humanized Wolverine in a way. "You came back from a shitty mission where you'd had your first kill. Kitty gets on you for being late, you snap. You probably say something stupid."

"I asked her not to go to college."

"Shit, you really did say something stupid," breathed the older mutant. "Well, anyway, she can't deal with that, and she runs off in tears."

"Pretty much."

"Did you tell her about the mission?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, well… Kitty's never been in that situation," said Wolverine. "I'm not excusing what you said, because it was pretty damn dumb, but she's never felt the guilt before. I have. I understand that a little better. I know it's hard, but you can't expect her to understand. You gotta tell her you're sorry."

"No," Lance said, some of his anger returning. "Thanks and all, but you can't understand all of it. She's just going to leave anyways. It's better this way. This way it won't be as bad saying goodbye."

"Because you won't have to say goodbye at all. Since you won't be on speaking terms at all."

"I guess you could put it that way."

"Whatever." Wolverine sighed and shook his head. "Chuck and I have had our disagreements, but we both agree the best way to learn is through experience, and if you want to be an idiot, I'm going to let you. Eventually you'll get it through your thick skull what an asshole you're being, and maybe Kitty will realize that she didn't handle things all that great either."

"And then there will be world peace and we'll all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'," said Lance with dark humor.

"Yeah, that's exactly where I was goin', kid," Wolverine grunted. "Whatever. It's been a good talk, even if you're an idiot. I understand you a little better now, and I don't think you're a complete punk. But you've got a lot to learn."

"I guess." Lance placed his hand on the back of his neck, breaking eye contact with the elder mutant. "Thanks, Wolverine. I kinda didn't expect such a, um, civil talk, but I think this will help me deal with everything."

"No problem, Alvers. If you ever decide to stop being an idiot, gimme a call. We can go out for a drink to celebrate." Wolverine stopped. "You _are_ twenty-one, right?"

Lance laughed. "Yeah, I am. But that sounds great. Don't count on it, but it sounds good to me."

"Good." Wolverine held up one hand in a half-salute. "I'll see you later, Rocky."

"Later."

Wolverine turned and walked away towards the house. This time Lance watched.

-

On Sunday morning Lance was awoken by the sound of the TV blaring and the slamming of the hotel door. Instinctively his hand reached for his gun, which was in its holster on his belt, and he always kept his belt right by his bed.

"Ease off, buddy, I know you've got your gun already." His hand eased when he heard Pietro's voice. "Paranoid lunatic. I just wanted to tell you it's time to get up."

"Ugh." Lance rolled over on his back and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "What time is it? Where've you been?"

"It's nine, so you probably need to get up and start moving if we want to get to the club by eleven. And I've been working out."

"You've been what?"

"Working out," said Pietro again.

Lance laughed and sat up in his bed. "Well _now_ I'm awake. What'd you do? Pump iron?"

"I ran on the treadmill."

"You're kidding me."

"Backwards."

"How was it?"

"Boring," admitted Pietro. "Even backwards the highest speed feels like I'm running through a bunch of jello. I don't think there's really a difference between forwards and backwards, honestly. But then I swam."

"You do look a little wet," Lance noted. "But wasn't that just as boring?"

"For the most part. At one point there was no one in the pool, so I was able to go a little faster."

"How fast?" Lance asked.

Pietro grinned. "Fast enough. Next time we're in Europe, though, I want to try to swim the English Channel in ten minutes."

"Wow." Lance let out a low whistle. "That's pretty damn good. What about your hair, though? Didn't the water disrupt the delicate gel balance? It's not looking very perky today."

"Don't worry, I brought my gel, pal. I've _always_ got gel handy. The ladies –"

"Dude, stop talking about the ladies."

"The ladies love the gel."

"Whatever, man."

Lance grabbed a pair of pants and began the haphazard process of sticking his legs through the legs. Pietro began to fiddle with the TV, and by the time Lance was dressed Pietro had been through every channel three times trying to find something worth watching.

"Just leave it on something, will you?"

"Nothing good on," Pietro moped. It was a stock market advice program, so Lance had to agree. "You ready to go eat breakfast?"

"Yeah, yeah, just let me get my right shoe on."

They took the elevator down and ate a quick (though terribly slow by Pietro's standards) breakfast, and they headed back upstairs to relax and make their final preparations. Pietro was going over one of the files when Lance's cell phone began to ring, interrupting the sports highlights show he was half-heartedly watching.

"Hello?"

"Alvers, this is Drew."

"Oh, hello, Drew." This caught Pietro's attention. "How's it going?"

"I'm just calling to make sure everything's in order for the Hellfire Club mission."

"Yeah, everything's good."

"Everything's great," Pietro said loudly.

"That's what I wanted to hear. Anyways, I just wanted to double-check and make sure that you both know that you _are_ permitted to use lethal force if necessary, but we're trying to make this a clean infiltration. Still, I'm hearing bad things about this, and I'm thinking this mission may be more dangerous than it seems."

Lance sat back against the headrest of the bed. "Really?"

"Yes," said Drew on the other end. "I know your powers may seem somewhat useless in this situation, but there may come a time where we authorize using any means necessary to escape the Club, even if it means bringing it down. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, but it may."

"Thanks for the pointers, but I think we'll be all right."

"I hope so." He thought he heard Drew sneeze. "Good luck, Alvers."

She hung up.

"What'd she say?" Pietro asked.

"That we've got a license to kill, pretty much," said Lance as he put the phone in his pocket. "To quote the badass James Bond movie that came on TV a few days ago."

"We already knew that. I could've sworn Fury said something about it in the debriefing."

"Yeah, not that it matters. If I've got a choice between getting my head blown off or blowing someone else's head off and ignoring protocol, then I'm going to say to hell with S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol. I'm not gonna get myself killed because I'm too scared to piss off some high-level bureaucrat."

"I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Lance didn't elaborate on his feelings about killing in the line of duty. For the most part he'd been pretty honest. "She also told me I'm cleared to bring the place down if that's the only way we can get out of there. I think she thinks we may be getting in a little over our heads."

"Psh, we'll be fine. Who does she think we are? We're the best task force S.H.I.E.L.D. has got."

"No we're not."

"Doesn't matter. We're the best mutant task force they've got, anyways."

"We're the _only_ mutant task force they've got."

"Doesn't matter," Pietro said again. As usual, Pietro's self-confidence openly defied all logic or reason. "We're still going to go in there and kick someone's ass if they try to mess with us."

"Now that I can agree with." Lance chewed a toothpick in his mouth. "Huh. I think Fury told me not to use my powers and to try to avoid lethal force, now that I think about it. I dunno what advice to follow."

"Well, Drew's hotter than Fury," said Pietro, and that settled that.

Lance read over the file again, although he thought he'd pretty much memorized it by now, and even if he hadn't, Pietro surely had. Laziness probably wasn't becoming of a member – and, arguably, the true leader – of an elite government agency, but he was tired, and he'd be fine once they actually got going. Whenever that was going to be.

"We need to go," Pietro said halfway through an airing of _Lethal Weapon_ on TV. "We don't want to be late."

"Yeah yeah yeah." Lance threw his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself to his feet. "I'm ready, let's go."

The elevator was crowded, and Lance was wedged between someone that only could have been a football lineman and someone playing a Game Boy. The machine would make annoying synthesized noises whenever the boy did particularly well, and by the time they reached the ground floor Lance was seriously fighting the urge to grab the damned handheld device and smash it into the glass of the elevator.

After finally escaping from the stifling confines of the elevator, the pair headed outside and hailed a cab. Just as he was about to get in Lance swore as he remembered something.

"Shit, I forgot my wallet," he breathed. "I left it on the sink."

"Do you really need it?" Pietro asked with his usual impatience.

"Yeah, it's got my I.D. Hang on one sec, I'll be right back."

He ignored the elevator and instead took the stairwell, hopping up two steps at a time. By the time he actually got to their floor he was beginning to breathe heavily. _I really need to work out more_, he thought as he slipped in the key card and pushed open the door. Sure enough, his wallet was right next to the sink. He grabbed it and headed out, this time taking the elevator. He could work out later.

The cab was waiting for him when he exited the hotel. Pietro had an odd look on his face as Lance crawled in the backseat.

"What is it?" he asked.

"What's what?" countered Pietro.

"You've got a look on your face. Like there's something you're not telling me."

"Stop being so paranoid," was all Pietro had to offer on the subject. Lance decided to drop it. Whatever it was, he really didn't want to know. It would probably only irritate him.

They arrived at the Club, and Lance paid the cabbie. The stairs were even busier than they had been the day before, and it struck Lance just how much the Hellfire Club looked like a church. A weird, occult-like, demonic church praising wealth and capitalism, but a church nonetheless.

"Okay," said Pietro. "Inducers on."

Lance pressed the button on his watch and his appearance changed, just enough to mask his identity. No one around them noticed the switch, and the two climbed the steps in peace. They waved to the man at the register, who didn't pay them much mind, and they headed to one of the elevators. The steel door slid open, and for the second time in as many days Lance found himself jabbing the 'U' button with his thumb.

They exited the elevator. The hostess from the day before was at her post, and Lance shot her a roguish grin.

"What's up, blondie?"

"Nothing much, mullet-head," she retorted, earning a laugh from Pietro.

"I like this girl!"

"It's not a mullet," said Lance, still grinning. "It just looks that way 'cause it's pushed back on the sides. Anyway, you know what we're supposed to do?"

"They're all setting up. I don't know. You should probably ask Kine."

"Just hang around and help out anyone if they ask," said Kine when the two approached him. He patted Pietro on the back. "I like you kids. I'm going to have fun training you two tomorrow."

Pietro smiled the fakest smile Lance had ever seen. "I can't wait, sir."

"Wayne," chuckled Kine, "you crack me up."

Again Lance felt that peculiar feeling in his fingertips – extreme joy, and then nothing.

After Pietro had sucked up sufficiently, Kine left them. Lance looked at his friend and asked, "Did you feel that?"

"The sudden happy feeling?" Pietro clarified. "Yeah, I did. Second time that's happened, too. You don't think…"

"Fury said some of them are probably mutants," Lance said, almost whispering. "I dunno. What do you think his power is?"

"Controlling feelings? I don't know. Whatever it is, it's freaking me out. I hate telepaths. Don't tell anyone, but I always hated fighting Grey. I hate the thought that she can get into my head without anyone knowing."

"Your dad doesn't seem to mind Xavier much."

"Yeah, well, my dear old dad also has a helmet that protects him from telepaths, doesn't he?"

"I guess that's true." Lance grabbed one of the passing waiters by the elbow and took him aside. "Sorry to bother you, bud, but when do customers start coming in?"

"Noon on Sundays," said the waiter. "So about thirty minutes."

"Thanks, man."

The waiter went on his way, but Pietro was less than satisfied. "God," he groaned. "We're gonna have to wait forever!"

They tried to keep busy until customers began arriving, but the staff seemed to have everything under control. Lance was more than happy to sit down on one of the chairs near the wall and just wait, but Pietro had always had problems being patient. He paced, although it was probably too fast to call pacing, and Lance realized they were lucky no one had noticed the unusual speed of Pietro's stride yet.

"Stop that, will you? If you're going to pace, at least do it at a near-human speed."

"Oh, shut up," said Pietro, undeterred. "Just keep brooding and leave me alone."

Lance stuck a toothpick in his mouth and shrugged. "All right. Fine with me. Have fun not talking to anyone."

Despite Pietro's fervent belief that noon would never arrive, it did just that, and the first customers began to take their seats. The silver-haired mutant scanned each new group, ending up disappointed each time he did so.

"I don't see him yet."

"He'll show."

"Maybe that girl was screwing with you."

"She wasn't screwing with me."

"I bet you wish she was screwing with you," Pietro said. Lance found the smirk that had come over his companion's face infinitely preferable to his irritating impatience.

"She doesn't like guys."

Pietro stopped, his face marked with disbelief. "She's a lesbian?"

"Yup."

"You're screwing with me."

"Oh," said a grinning Lance, the toothpick bobbing up and down in his mouth as he spoke, "you wish I were, don't you? Sorry, 'Tro, but I just don't swing that way. Maybe Pyro does."

"Will you just shut up for once in your life?"

"Sorry, but not yet," Lance stated as he stood up. His attention had been caught by a lone man taking his seat at a small table in the corner. "There he is. Buckman. We got our man."

Pietro looked to where Lance's eyes were pointed. "Okay. Now what?"

"I thought you had a bright idea."

"Incidentally, I do," Pietro said with a sneer, "but you should probably have a back-up just in case. It wouldn't hurt to use your head once in a while, Lance."

"Trust me, Pietro, you do _not_ want me to use my head right now. I'll end up with a headache, but it'll be nothing like what'd happen to you and everyone else in this joint."

"Yeah, probably. Now you just hold on one second, Lancey. Let me handle the tough stuff."

Lance was more than content to watch while Pietro worked his magic. For a while his friend did nothing. It looked like he was waiting for someone. The waiter Lance had stopped earlier emerged from the kitchen, looking harried and annoyed, and Lance could see Pietro's eyes light up.

"'Scuse me, but this is your section, right?" Pietro asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"There are a bunch of people in this section. I'm not doing anything right now. Would you mind if I helped out?"

The waiter did not hide his surprise. "Uh, no, that'd be great. You see that blond guy sitting by himself? Can you bring him his water and take his drink order? I can get his appetizer and entrée, but I need to finish up serving this one group first."

"No problem, pal. Consider it done."

The waiter nodded and walked past to another table. Pietro smirked at Lance, and Lance grinned back. "Cheeky bastard," he muttered. "What're you gonna do now?"

He saw Pietro approach the table. He couldn't hear what was being said, but the man, Buckman, didn't seem to notice anything awkward about the situation, and soon enough Pietro walked away and into the kitchen. A minute later he reappeared with a glass of water and a wine list, leaving both with the man, who paid him no more mind as he returned to Lance.

"C'mon," said Pietro, latching his hand onto Lance's shoulder. "We need to go to the restroom."

"Hold on, what?" asked Lance. Pietro had already begun dragging him to the front. "I don't really need to go, dude."

"Nonsense. Of course you do. I can sense these things, Lance. It's one of my powers."

"No it's not!"

"Could be," Pietro replied indignantly.

The hostess surveyed them as Pietro pulled Lance down into the corridor, a smile playing on her lips. Lance waved at her, but it was a meek gesture, and soon enough Pietro had pulled him into the restroom.

"Jesus, Pietro, what's this all about? Guys aren't supposed to go powder up together. That's what girls do. Trust me, I've been on double dates." He'd also learned that Kitty, Rogue, and Amara must've used more make-up than any other women in the world, judging by the time they spent in the bathroom. That or they saved any scrap of gossip for their restroom meet-ups.

Pietro ignored him as he checked the stalls and the urinals. Satisfied that they were alone, he turned back to Lance. "Don't be silly, I didn't drag you in here to powder up. If you're that uncomfortable alone in a bathroom with me, don't worry. Soon there will be three of us."

"The hell?"

"Fury gave us laxatives," Pietro said, "which, judging from the stupid look on your face, you'd probably forgotten all about. It's in our standard kit, if you hadn't noticed, and they're really handy. I used them on that theater mission."

"Oh, I remember that," said Lance. "I'd forgotten about that. Huh."

"Yeah, well, while you were busy forgetting about all the important details, I was busy mixing a quick-acting laxative into Buckman's water. If last time is anything to judge by, he'll be in here a few minutes after he takes a sip of his drink."

"At which time we beat him up and take him over to that damn door."

"Well, I guess." Pietro reached into his pocket and retrieved a tiny syringe with a cap on the needle. "Or I could just poke him with this needle and wait for the sedative to take its toll. Which, from previous experience, will take about ten seconds."

"Huh. Yeah, I thought about that earlier, but it slipped my mind. This sedative and laxative stuff is kinda sudden, though. You couldn't have told me earlier?"

"I thought you had your own ideas," Pietro pointed out.

"Yeah, right," Lance chuckled. "But this stuff… it's like that thing we learned in English. The Greek or Latin thing. Deus ex something."

"Deus ex machina?" Pietro asked, and Lance nodded. "Hardly. You didn't think a top-secret government agency would provide members of its covert strike team with the necessary tools to detain innocents?"

"Just shut up already, Pietro. You're making me feel stupid."

Pietro congratulated himself with a celebratory fist pump. "Mission accomplished!"

"You're stupid, too. I hope you know that."

"Stop being such a sap, Lance."

"Stop batting your eyelashes, Pietro. You're freaking me out."

"If I must." Pietro checked his watch, careful not to nudge any of the buttons connected to the image inducer. "Jeez, would his bowels hurry up already?"

"Ugh," Lance groaned. "You really did not have to say that. Bad mental image."

"Well, we're pretty much waiting on his digestive system at this point. I'm just being honest."

"I don't like your brand of honesty." Lance folded his arms over his chest. "I've got a question: should we wait for him to finish his business before we poke him? I mean, I dunno, but I don't want him… letting loose while we're trying to drag him to the door."

Pietro rubbed his chin. "Huh, hadn't thought about that. Good idea. I think we should wait, definitely. I really don't want to have to deal with _that._"

"Same."

At that moment the door opened and in walked one Edward Buckman. Their intended target did not look well. He ignored the pair and headed for the stall, slamming the door behind him once he was inside. Lance was intensely thankful that there was music playing in the bathroom; he really had no desire to hear what Buckman was up to.

Pietro reached for the door and locked it.

They waited. They were silent while they waited, and Buckman was no louder. It seemed like it was taking an eternity for the Club member to finish up, but after some time spent twiddling their thumbs, there was a flush and the door to the stall opened. Buckman stood in the doorway, his countenance a combination of relief and pain.

"I'm sorry, sir," quipped Pietro. "Did your drink not agree with you?"

Buckman's face sagged as he looked over the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. "You're not waiters, are you?"

"Nope," said Pietro. He brandished the needle and drew closer to Buckman, like a lion stalking towards its prey.

"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

"No," said Lance, startled.

"But for all you know we are," added Pietro, and in an instant the needle was pressing into Buckman's neck. A split-second later the sedative had been injected, and Pietro withdrew the syringe. "Okay, you've got about ten seconds. Anything you'd like to say?"

"I don't know…"

Buckman's body crumpled forward. There was a muffled plopping sound when he hit the floor.

"I guess he didn't have ten seconds," Lance mused.

"Okay, grab his right arm," Pietro ordered. "I got the left."

"One sec." Lance unlocked the door before turning to the unconscious businessman. "Here we go."

Together they carried Buckman out into the hallway. They were careful to make sure no one was in sight, and they rushed to the door at the end of the corridor. Pietro let go, and Lance cradled Buckman's head with his hands. They adjusted him to eye-level with the scanner, and Pietro pried open his eyelids.

"Good afternoon, Edward," said a mechanized male voice. The door slid open.


	9. My Silver Bullet

This is a really short chapter, but the next two chapters - the last two chapters - are much longer, and this sets up the climax of the story. This chapter and the one after it are where the story earns its Action genre.

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

* * *

-

_My Silver Bullet_

They dragged Buckman inside the doorway and the door slid shut behind them. Pietro dropped the man's left side onto the ground and began patting his pockets.

"Damn it, where'd I put those other injections?" he mumbled. He withdrew something from his shirt pocket. "There we go!"

"What's that?" Lance asked, eyeing this new syringe.

"The stuff Fury said would make him forget his own name. We don't want him identifying us and ratting us out, do we?"

"Good thinking."

Pietro administered the shot, and they hauled the unconscious businessman into a storage closet near the door. If anyone took a peek inside they'd find him easily, but for now it was fine. Buckman would be out for a while.

"You know when he wakes up he's going to realize something's not right," Lance pointed out as they shut the door of the storage closet together. "I don't know how often it is that he wakes up in a closet full of cleaning supplies. And then he'll tell the Club and they'll probably check the cameras or something."

"Are there cameras?" Pietro wondered aloud. His eyes scanned the room and he frowned. "Ugh, there are. Let's just be quick."

They were in another corridor, although this one was nearly entirely metallic. It had a sterile feel to it that unsettled Lance. The pair appeared to be alone, but that did nothing to ease his restless mind.

"Alvers." Lance held his watch to his mouth. Obviously the head honchos over at S.H.I.E.L.D. had something to say to him. "Alvers, are you there?"

"Yeah. Who is this?"

"It's Drew. I was notified that you'd gained entry into a private sector of the Club reserved for top members. From here on out I'm personally supervising your mission from S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Chicago."

"All right," he said. "Question, though: now that we're actually in here, what are we supposed to do?"

"We want you to access the computer database inside. You'll find computers in many of the rooms along the hallway, if I'm correct in my guessing, and I usually am."

"How're we supposed to get in?" Pietro inquired of his watch. "We're not exactly computer hackers here."

"We don't expect you to be. Our specialists couldn't get in from the outside, and we've come to the conclusion that they obviously don't use a password system. More likely than not they use fingerprint scanners or some physical failsafe."

Lance glanced back at the storage closet. "You're telling me that Buckman's going to have to come along for the ride."

"Yes."

"Great," muttered Pietro. "One more question before we go do our grunt work, though. There are cameras. What the hell are we supposed to do about the cameras?"

"Once you activate the computers I want you to implant the extra USB drive attached to your watches," crackled Drew's voice. "From there our technicians will have better access to their mainframe, and we'll work on taking their security systems offline."

"Right-o. Call us if there're any other chores you want done. Groceries, dry cleaning… really, we love this stuff."

"Do your job, Maximoff."

"Yes ma'am." The communicator shut off, and Pietro threw Lance a look. "Boy, she's not happy, is she? So much for asking her out."

"You know she can still hear us, right?"

Pietro smirked and began to pull open the closet door. Buckman looked very relaxed, lying on top of several mops, although Lance figured anyone would look relaxed with the amount of sedative they'd injected into Buckman's bloodstream. Lance hoisted Buckman upward and threw one of the man's arms on his shoulder, and Pietro did the same. Together they carried him out of the closet and into the corridor. With some effort they managed to open the first door they came upon and drag Buckman's limp body inside. Lance supported the man's weight as Pietro activated the office's lone computer.

_Even the desk is metal,_ Lance thought. Buckman's head sagged on his shoulder. _This is really starting to creep me out._

"Okay, it's a fingerprint scanner like she said," Pietro announced. "Come over here and give me his hand."

Lance hobbled to the desk, and Pietro placed the man's thumb to a pad nearby the monitor. A green emblem flashed onto the screen and Pietro grinned.

"All right, you can drop him now." _Thump._ "We're logged in. Where's the damn USB drive on this thing? God I hate Macs."

Lance let Pietro investigate the hard drive for a while. He'd never really been very good at computers.

"Aha!" With a click something was detached from Pietro's watch, and the mutant placed it into a slot on the hard drive before holding his watch to his mouth once more. "Drew, we're in."

The crackling sound came back, notifying them of Drew's audio presence. "I noticed. We're working on the security as we speak."

"All right, is there anything you want us to do?"

"Actually, we'd like you to save some of the documents to the removable hard drive. We should be able to get them from our technicians, but it's always best to have a hard copy just in case."

"I read you." Pietro opened a folder on the desktop. "This looks interesting. Do you just want me to copy the entire folder?"

"That would be preferable, yes."

"All right. It's transferring."

"Good. While we're waiting, I'd like both for you to put in your earpieces and activate them. It's bad enough if they hear you; if they hear me it'll be even worse."

The two broke off detachable clips on their watches and placed them in their right ears. Drew's voice was now closer, more intimate.

"How's the transfer going?"

"About normal. It'll be done in a bit, then I'll get some of the other folders on there." Pietro opened one of the files and sped-read it (something at which he was particularly skilled). "What the hell? This looks like a memo to the Zimbabwean president. Isn't there a big controversy going on over there with the election?"

"Yes, the incumbent is being accused of subverting democracy," replied Drew. "What does the file say?"

"It looks like Buckman and someone named Shaw were selling Zimbabwe weapons." Pietro opened another file. "And this is a similar memo to Haiti, but it's from about a decade ago."

"Interesting." Drew didn't sound surprised. "Transfer done?"

"Yeah, I'm copying another folder. Huh. It appears Buckman has some holdings in a major Iranian oil company. And he has holdings in a rival US oil company, as well."

"Yes, we assumed that there were some shady deals going on," said the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative. "But we're looking for another folder. Something dealing with mutants."

Lance glanced at the hallway. No one was coming. "We're good."

"All right. I think this folder may be it." A second as Pietro skimmed several files. "Who's this Shaw person? He keeps coming up in these files. And there's something here about a school in Boston, but it doesn't look like much of a school. It looks more like a training facility for a mutant task force."

"That's what we're looking for. Copy that file."

"I am." He surrendered a low whistle. "Whoa. They've got a full profile of each X-Man. They've got a file on us, but they don't have much. For the first time in my life I'm actually glad Xavier's team of losers gets more publicity than we do."

"I still don't like the sound of that," said Lance. "I don't like the thought of these creepos reading up on us over their morning coffee."

"I concur," said Drew. "This isn't good. Just get the files and get out of there. Copy them all and run for your lives. I don't care. Something's not right here."

Lance added, "Yeah, it's like they pretty much invited us to read all their secrets. Shoddy security. That reminds me. How are the security-breaching efforts going?"

"They're working on it. I'd feel a lot better about all of this if you two would hurry up and get out of there already."

"I can't make the transfer go any faster," Pietro chided her. He grinned. "Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that _Í'm_ being the patient one here?"

Minutes passed as Pietro found more and more files of interest to the brass at S.H.I.E.L.D. He summarized them aloud for Lance and Drew's benefit, seemingly unaware that Lance could read, and Drew had a camera. Buckman had some deal with Russian nuclear "enthusiasts." He was planning to send two employees to deal with them, and from this it looks like they're mutants. Hm, doesn't look like things went too well, does it? And what's this about a mutant village in Argentina?

Please, Lance thought. We get it. Just shut up. But Drew was fascinated. Continue, Maximoff. Open that file, Maximoff. Mutants, did you say? Yes, mutants. Open it. I am, honey. Don't call me honey. Lance thought their banter was enough to drive a decent hard-working kid from Illinois nuts.

More nuclear crap. Something about Weapon X. Bla bla bla. What are Chinese mutant terrorist organizations doing in the middle of Afghanistan?

"This is really freaking weird," Pietro said in conclusion.

"I could've told you that," Lance retorted. _Thank God he's stopped summarizing._

"How is the file transfer going, Maximoff?"

"Not too fast." A hint of displeasure in his voice. No surprise. "Those Russian diagrams are taking a while. It looks like some of the waivers are slow to download, also."

"That's enough. As soon as the download's complete, get out of there. Leave Buckman. We'll handle him."

"Really? How so?"

"Send an agent disguised as a doctor," she said brusquely. What she meant was: _Duh! You imbecile!_ "Say that Buckman called, that he was having a heart attack. They'll find Buckman in this room, and it explains everything."

Pietro gave a tut of approval. "You're a genius, Drew."

"No, I'm just smarter than you are. That doesn't make me a genius."

"Thanks." Pietro opened another file. "Oh. Wow."

Lance, supremely uninterested, decided to make an effort and grunted, "What is it?"

"It's a plan for action in case of the eventual economic demise of the United States of America. Thing is, from what it says in here – I'm only halfway down the document – it seems like they're… _planning_ on this economic demise."

"Copy that entire folder," Drew commanded. What she meant this time was: _Screw the safety of our operatives and what I just said. If I pull this off I'm going to get a promotion. Goodbye, cubicle, hello corner office!_ "Scan that and get the hell out of there."

"All right, we got it already. I'm sorry the computer isn't as fast as I am."

Lance didn't bother mentioning the alternate, less flattering side of that statement. Drew, after all, was a woman, and it was impolite to say such things in the presence (well, whatever) of women. Not that Rogue or Tabby seemed to mind. Mystique would've minded his double entendres, but Mystique seemed to mind everything. For some reason evil manipulative supervillains were always really uptight.

"My God, how long is this going to take? This computer sucks."

"Whack it," Lance suggested.

"Alvers, remind me to suggest that you take a S.H.I.E.L.D.-standard computer science course," Drew sighed.

"Whack it," Lance repeated.

"What the hell. Sorry, boss." Pietro whacked the hard drive. "What do you know, it's going faster now. I never knew that actually worked."

"Neither did I. But whacking the computer always made me feel better."

"Enough with the drivel," droned Drew. "Focus."

"We _are _focused, but we can't really help it if the computer isn't, can we? I mean, it's not like I can get in there and process all the files for it. Stop giving us –"

Pietro would never identify whatever it was she was giving the two: at that moment they heard a door slam down the corridor.

Lance muttered a choice word that would not have been wise to say on live TV.

"What is it?" Drew asked.

"Someone's here," Pietro whispered.

"Well, hide!"

A man stood in the hallway. Lance's eyes met his and both stiffened.

"A bit too late for that," mumbled Pietro.

Drew wasn't happy. "Shit."

"Who are you?" asked the man. He wasn't wearing a suit like the other patrons of the Club. In fact, he seemed to be in full uniform. A guard, probably. Hadn't done his job very well so far. "Why are you here?"

Pietro obviously didn't know what to say so Lance took a chance and replied, "Cleaning."

"You're not part of the cleaning crew."

"Take him out," said Drew. "Permission to use lethal force."

Lance ruminated that this poor bastard in front of them didn't know that an official from his elected government had just ordered his elimination. Life was full of its little ironies.

"Listen, we're part of the new crew…" The man took a few steps backward and Lance stopped. "Hey, what're you doing?"

The guard said nothing.

"Oh Christ," breathed Lance. "Pie, he's getting the alarm!"

There was a streak of beige and white and the man fell to the floor. He groaned, and Pietro kicked him in the face for good measure.

The alarm sounded.

"This sucks," Lance mused.

"I know, Einstein. And stop calling me Pie. It's the most embarrassing nickname on Earth."

"If you would stop flirting," huffed Drew, "I'd love it if you could get your asses out of there."

"All right, all right – oh sweet mother of God."

A door down the hall had burst open, and Lance stepped into the corridor to see what was going on. A team of new guards was standing in their path, and boy were they pissed off. Lance could tell. The raised guns were sort of a giveaway.

"Freeze and identify yourselves," barked the tallest of the men. Lance noticed that he was carrying a shotgun. The same type of shotgun as that idiot kid in Argentina had used. Lance hoped this one wouldn't end up three inches in front of his face. "I said freeze and identify yourselves!"

"Oh, shut up!" Lance growled, and he sent a light shockwave through the ground. The men were thrown off balance and tumbled to the ground. "Let's go, Pie!"

"Will you stop calling me that?" Pietro shot back as they turned to run for the exit.

And found themselves thrown on their asses right promptly.

"Oh my God," Lance said.

"They've got a freaking werewolf!" Pietro shrieked. God was conspicuously silent. "Jesus Christ, don't you think that's taking the Gothic thing a little overboard?"

"Werewolf" was indeed the most accurate term for what stood before them. A very pissed off werewolf in a tuxedo, but still a werewolf.

"Oh shit," Lance realized. "Fury said they had mutants."

Pietro scrambled to his feet, countering, "He didn't say they had mythical creatures!"

The wolf-in-the-tuxedo observed them, a speckle of drool dripping from its mouth. Lance glanced over his shoulder at the door. "Pietro, the guards are getting up. If you can handle them I'll get to work on this werewolf. Deal?"

"You got it!" cried Pietro, all too eager to avoid the high class beast.

"Did you say werewolf?" asked Drew. "Huh, so Von Roehm is there…"

"You know this thing?" Lance asked incredulously. "Forget it, I don't want to know!"

The tall guard picked up his shotgun.

"Pietro, _now!"_

The guards aimed, but that was as far as they got. In half a second Pietro had drawn his pistol and fired three perfect shots. Each of the guards dropped as the bullet pierced their skull, and Lance couldn't help but notice that Pietro was much neater at killing people carrying shotguns than he was.

Von Roehm roared, and Lance sent another shockwave, this time in the lycanthrope's direction. The werewolf faltered, but it did not fall.

Lance grabbed his gun and pointed it at the creature, which seemed to recognize the weapon for what it was. "Pietro, go get the shotgun, 'cause what I'm about to do is really going to piss this thing off!"

Lance shot the thing right between the eyes, and it howled. He didn't pause before shooting it again, but it was thrashing about and he missed the head, so this time he went for the heart. It shuddered, and his bullet probably ended up in the lung, but it was good enough – or so he thought.

The werewolf growled and began to charge the still-sitting Lance.

"Oh shut up."

Lance ducked to the ground as Pietro discharged a shotgun round into the werewolf's snout.

There was a thump and Lance heard no more growling.

"Huh," Pietro said. "Who knew? Apparently werewolves don't respond well to shotguns."

Lance grimaced as he got to his feet, his pants now blood-stained. "Ugh, that's sick. Werewolf brain. Let's get out of here before they set a dragon on us."

Pietro went to open the door, but it wasn't moving.

"Oh," said Pietro.

"What?"

"They've got this whole joint on lockdown. We're gonna need to find another way out."

"Motherfu–"

A bullet whizzed by his head and Lance dived around the corner.

Only to find an angry hulk of a man glaring down at his face.

-


	10. My Ticket to Ride

Sorry for the delay. As always, not mine. There's one more chapter after this.

* * *

-

_Ten: My Ticket to Ride_

Alison returned to the dorm room sometime that morning, but Kitty had accidentally phased through the electric clock and as a result she had no idea what the time was. Nothing was going her way today. It would have been a poor day for skydiving or street racing – not that she was sure _any_ day was good for skydiving or street racing.

"What's up with you?" asked Alison.

Kitty decided to reply with the old standard: "Homework."

"No, really. I know you don't have any trouble with all that physics stuff. It's totally out of my league, but you're pretty good at it."

"Uh, thanks. Thanks."

"No problem. Now tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing." _Honey you should never tell lies or else Mommy and Daddy will know, okay? And we will _not_ be happy. _A seven-year-old Kitty Pryde nodded and clutched her safety blanket to her chest. _I'll never tell lies, Mommy._ "My ex."

"Boy trouble!" exclaimed Alison, as if she were happy. Happy. Kitty frowned. "That's easy to deal with. So who's the hunk?"

"His name is – was – well, his name is Lance and he's not my boyfriend any more. That's what I meant by ex."

"You still really care about him, though," stated Alison.

"Are you a telepath?" was the first thing that Kitty wanted to say, and "Yes, way too much," was the second, but the third time was a charm so Kitty settled on, "How did you know?"

"It's obvious. The way you said his name."

"Would it have made a difference if I spat it?" _Lance,_ she spat in her head. _Lance._ It never sounded venomous enough. _Lance. LANCE._ "How did I say it?"

"All wistfullish." There were no words in the dictionary to describe the way she'd said Lance's name, or at least that's what Kitty gathered. "You just _said_ it, you know? Like it's so obvious that you're trying to forget him and it's not working at all."

_Dear Professer Xavier… so I think my roommate is a telepath. It's really freaking me out. Help? Regards, Katherine Pryde._ No, that didn't sound right. "Thanks."

"I'm not judging you. I know what it's like, babe." The thing Kitty hated the most about Alison was the babes. The babes and the sweeties and the munchkins. The munchkins especially. "Any reason you're starting to think about him all of a sudden?"

"It's not really… all of a sudden."

"Oh. Is _that_ why you've been so miserable?"

"No! What?"

"_What_ what?"

"I'm not miserable!"

God Kitty really hoped this girl wasn't a telepath. "Yes you are. I'm not dumb. You're so miserable. I'm sorry you're so miserable, but I thought you were just homesick. Are you miserable because of this Lance?"

"No!" said Kitty. Her computer glared at her, proffering her unfinished e-mail to Rogue. "Okay, I'm pretty miserable. And I definitely miss Lance. But I'm more miserable because I'm a long way from home and all my friends and no one here seems to like me and all I've got are my studies and I was kind of hoping I could go here and not be a, you know, a mutant."

"Oh. Yeah, I get that." And something in her eyes actually gave Kitty pause. Maybe this wasn't the hand to raise a couple chips, because who knew, maybe this blonde _did_ have trip-aces. (She noted that she sometimes thought like Lance, and it bothered her.) "I… I understand all the stuff that comes with being a mutant. Don't ask me how, but I understand. I know you love studying all this physics and math, etc, etc, this stuff that's _way_ over my head, but weren't you one of those X-Men? It just seems to me like you really miss something. I'm not going to say I know you really well, since that would be, like, a huge lie, but sweetie –" this earned a flinch "– you're not right. You like what you're studying, but you don't like what you're doing. This _isn't_ what you're meant to do. There are a lot of great universities in New York, but you came out here, and for what? It sounds like you're running away more than anything. It sounds like you're afraid you're going to be this person and never change, if you get what I mean."

"Whoa. That was deep."

Alison giggled. "Thanks."

"And I think you're probably right," Kitty continued. "I hate it here. There's all this great stuff and all these great stores, but it seems like I never have any time! There's no one worth dating, there's no one worth talking to – well, obviously there is someone – and I don't feel like I'm doing anything important. I hear all this amazing stuff that's happening back home, and I just miss it, right? I love school, but I hate everything else. I'm starting to think I screwed up."

"I thought so," grinned Alison. "And this Lance. Is he back home?"

"Yeah, and I miss him a lot, but that's not it. I… I miss _everything."_

"Then why all of a sudden are you thinking about Lance?"

Obviously it was no use asking why Alison knew that she had been thinking of Lance a lot more the past few days. Stupid telepaths. "He's in town. For work."

"Oh? Where's he working?"

"The Hellfire Club," Kitty said, and even she couldn't believe the words had stumbled out of her mouth like two drunk college juniors at closing time from the bar down the street from the football field.

"Ooh, swanky! Is this Lance rich?"

"Not at all. He's… he's had a rough life. He's a mutant." To say the least. "But he's so sweet and so temperamental and so wannabe-tough and he just seems to love and hate absolutely and it's like, my God, I wish I felt as much love and hate in my entire life as he feels in one day! He's a mess. But... Yeah. He's a mess."

"And has he visited you?"

Some broken-off rebel fragment of Kitty laughed. "Uh, not exactly. We didn't end on the best of terms. He wasn't happy that I was leaving, and he had the worst day of his life on the day of my going-away party and missed the party, and then we fought… it wasn't pretty. But I went and visited him and it didn't go well."

"And you're just going to sit there and let it lie."

"That was my plan."

"Your plan."

"It seemed pretty good at the time."

"Pretty good?"

"But in hindsight I see that I made a few, uh, tactical errors."

"Oh yes?"

"Just tell me what you're thinking," Kitty begged.

_I think you're an overly emotional idiot. I think you should stop being so pathetic. I think you have no friends and you're lonely. _"I think you should pay him a visit at the Hellfire Club."

"Uh, probably not the best idea."

"Right." Alison climbed onto her bed. "Okay. Have fun moping for the rest of your life."

"I'm not moping."

The bed creaked as Alison rolled over to face the wall. "Okay. I'm taking a nap."

"I'm not moping that much."

"Wake me up in thirty minutes, will you?"

"Fine, I'm moping way too much for my own good and I'm completely miserable." Alison rolled over the other way, but the bed didn't creak this time. Even the bedspread liked Alison better than Kitty. "But his job… he's sort of with the government. I'm not sure that they'd like it if I intruded on him. He's only in town for the weekend and he's got a lot of work. So I probably should just stay out of his business."

A staccato _raaawk_ from the bed signified Alison's disinterest. "Wake me up in thirty minutes."

Kitty dropped her chin onto her wood desk and contemplated just sinking into the center of the Earth and disappearing completely. Her pens, neatly arranged in her "Best Camp Counselor 2007" commemorative cup from a summer camp held at the Institute, leered at her, tall imposing figurines imitating those detectives from the film noirs Evan used to watch. _This girl, she ain't got no spine. She couldn'ta done it. No backbone, like I said. _The clip on the cap of her favorite pen began to turn into a stream of smoke from a detective's cigarette.

"I hate myself," Kitty muttered into the table. The table was silent, but if it could talk it probably would have agreed.

"I can hear you."

"I really hate myself," Kitty said, and not more quietly.

"Oh, hon, don't say that." The fact that Alison rolled over – again – was some success. "You're being a big-time bring-me-down, but you shouldn't start going Nirvana on me. I hate grunge. It's so icky."

It did not escape Kitty that "icky" had used to be in her vocabulary. This did nothing to ease her sense of self-loathing.

"What do you think I should do, Alison?"

"I think you should pick your head up off the desk." That was easy enough. Then: "I think you should go track down this Lance guy and tell him just what you feel."

There was always a catch. "I don't _know_ what I feel."

"Oh, how complicated can it be?" For Alison, it probably wasn't. "You care about this guy. A lot. You're miserable here 'cause you miss home and no one likes you and you feel you're wasting your life. Tell him that, too. You don't have to promise him anything. I just think that if you tell him what you're feeling right now and get it all off your chest and even things out between the two of you, then maybe you'll feel all like…"

"Closure?" Kitty finished.

"Yeah. Closure. You don't need to decide anything right this second. I just think that if you settle things between the two of you, or at least you put it all out there and be completely honest, that you'll be able to move on. Then you can decide if you want to stick with school or ditch it for this hunk back in Bayville."

"What could happen is I go and tell him all this stuff and he thinks I'm pathetic and he's still mad at me."

"Or," said Alison brightly, "you could not go and feel even more pathetic and depressed and so on."

_There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22,_ recited part of Kitty that still remembered her favorite book from her junior year of high school. Either she went and potentially got rejected or she stayed and felt no better than an insignificant speck on the wall. (_That's some catch, that Catch-22,_ whistled the same part of her brain, having teamed up with the ironic portion of her medulla oblongata. Or cerebellum. Whatever it was.)

"One day is fine and the next is black," sung Alison. Kitty was too irritated to be soothed by the fact that Alison had a voice softer than the fur of her uncle's puppy Boston terrier and sweeter than any slurpee Kurt had ever brought home for her. Kitty wondered when she'd started thinking in terrible figurative language. "So if you want me off your back?"

"That's Clash, isn't it? Please stop. I heard _Sandinista _my entire senior year. Kurt became obsessed."

"Well, come on and let me know!"

"Please don't finish. Please."

Alison's voice dropped, although Kitty had no musical training and couldn't discern the exact change. "Should I stay or should I go?"

"I hate you so much right now."

"At least you don't hate yourself!"

"True." The girl knew her stuff. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. Kitty was finding it hard to decide. She was finding it hard to decide anything. A car was teetering over the edge of a cliff and she didn't now whether to watch it fall or to push it herself. "Fine," she said, and she said it to test if she actually believed it. "I'll do it. I'll go to the Hellfire Club and stick my head in –" _literally, _she mused "– and say hello and tell him that I want to talk to him. And if he can talk there we'll talk, and if he can't we'll talk after he's done with work. Happy?"

"I never said anything about making _me_ happy," Alison replied with a mystery of a smile. "But you should go. You never know how traffic's going to be."

Kitty shoved her textbook against the pen jar, and if she was nervous before, the fact that she was, in the esteem of the pen jar, the Best Camp Counselor 2007 gave her strength, because if she could deal with a bunch of whiny pubescent mutants without control of their powers, she could deal with a whiny post-pubescent mutant with suspect control of his powers (and his anger).

"All right." Kitty shuddered, stood, and said once more for some kind of luck, "All right," and then walked through the door.

Across the hall and down the stairs, out the door and into the city; lather, rinse, repeat in the cycle of Kitty's college life. She rose her hand as if to hail a comrade, but instead of a soldier she got a cab, but she was happy enough with transportation not to complain.

"Where to?" asked the comrade cabbie.

"Hellfire Club."

"Aren't we swanky." And as she looked at the meter, already close to five dollars as they took a left on Whatever Avenue, a sense of anonymous fear crept over her. She thought at first that she'd forgotten something, and in a way she had. The meter, ever helpful, reminded her that she should've taken the subway.

They swirled into the giant blender that was downtown Chicago. The cab bounced between high-rises and screeched past street-level shops that the average human being would never be able to afford. There was a street that would lead to another street that would lead to West Addison and Wrigley Field, but they did not turn onto the second cousin of West Addison and so continued their slow lurch towards the pit of all human conscience and decency, the so-called home of the upper echelon, the Hellfire Club.

The cab swung to a stop behind a veritable armada of black SUVs, and with all the elegance becoming of his unkempt mustache the cabbie announced, "Here it is."

But that wasn't exactly accurate. It was close to blasphemy to say that the Hellfire Club just _was_. The Hellfire Club celebrated its existence in a depressingly explosive display of neo-Gothicism, gargoyles and gray stone and everything Dracula would adore. It budged aside its neighbor buildings, the true architectural bully, and said, quite plainly, "I'm here – just try and ignore me! _Harrumph!"_

Kitty paid the mustache and escaped from the clutches of her metallic yellow once-upon-a-minute-ago comrade. The stairs of marble beckoned all visitors.

One step, two step, three step, four step. Up and up she went, and the doors suffered from no less embellishment. Two gargoyles guarded the entrance with glares uncharacteristic of manmade sculptures. Kitty acknowledged the guardians with a nod apiece, and they made no move to stop her as she swung open the doors and stepped over the threshold.

She expected to be stopped by a clerk or guard or anyone as she walked forward – "Excuse me, miss, but we've been informed that your annual income is less than twenty million dollars…" – but the front desk was empty. She honored the Club by waiting thirty seconds before walking to the elevator and pressing the button with her lowly middle-class thumb. The elevator made no discrimination as the door slid open, and she slipped inside. According to the friendly, sterile steel panel display, she could go up or down, and as a general rule she knew the most important (illegal) activities always took place in the secrecy of the underground, so she directed the elevator towards the center of the Earth.

It was idiotic, of course, that criminals preferred the underground, for the underground had its immediate disadvantages. Yes, there was a certain safety implied by the ten or so feet of dirt, but it also implicated a disheartening lack of escape routes. At least above ground you could keep an eye on the outside world and jump out a window if things got too bad.

Kitty spat out the strand of hair she'd been chewing. Not that ten feet of dirt mattered to her.

_Snikt. _The door slid open, and she only paused for a moment to wallow in nostalgia. Then she stepped out and left her memories of Logan behind.

A blonde stood at a raised desk. Kitty approached and the blonde quirked what must have once been an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"I'm here looking for someone." She stopped – what was Lance's alias, again? "Uh, Bruce Kent. I think he works here. Tall, long dark hair, early twenties…"

"Yeah, he and Clark went to the restroom a while ago." The blonde pointed her pen down the corridor. "You'll want to check in there. I left my post a minute ago, so they might've come back, but without a reservation I can't let you in anyways. But you're more than welcome to check out the men's restroom. I don't mind."

"Thanks," said Kitty, not sure if the hostess was deliberately being condescending or if it was just in her nature. She headed down the hall, and as she walked the neo-Gothicism slowly faded into a décor worthy of Magneto. Torches transformed into fluorescent lights, and on her left a door had the telltale sign of a men's bathroom.

She pushed open the door and was met with the smell of soap and urine. A man was pissing in a urinal and talking on the phone, but he didn't even seem to notice that a nineteen-year-old girl was observing him. Kitty's eyes involuntarily lowered and she held back a snort. A quick run-over told her that Pietro and Lance weren't in the room, so she shut the door and left the man to his ménage a trios with the urinal and his cell phone.

She was at an impasse, and she decided, with help from her natural stupidity in times of danger, to continue down the corridor. The doors were faceless to her; none was interesting enough to be worthy of two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

Until she reached the end of the hall and came face to face with a big bolted door with an eye scanner.

She pressed her ear to the door, but it did not speak. No sounds came from the other side, and Kitty frowned. Lance had never been one for quietness, and Pietro was the type to walk around the block with a boom box declaring his superiority. The quiet was unsettling.

With one glance back down the hall and at her life as a college freshman, Kitty Pryde stepped through the bolted door.

-

The big man was not pleased to be standing over a precocious S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with a handgun. He stomped a brick of a foot down on Lance's gun shoulder, and Lance involuntarily surrendered a shriek. The man pointed a handgun of his own down at Lance's forehead.

"What on earth?"

Lance looked down over the swell of his pectorals. Standing at the door was his equally precocious ex-girlfriend, who seemed to be surprised that she had just stepped into a modern-day spaghetti western shootout.

The man raised his gun towards Kitty, who was staring down the hall, probably at Pietro.

Lance made an effort to free his right shoulder but quickly realized it was no use. He grabbed the gun with his left hand, pointed it upward, and fired.

Red coated Lance's vision, and the man fell over. A hole in his chin dripped blood onto the steel floor.

"My God," Kitty said.

"I know," agreed Lance with equal amazement. "I'm ambidextrous."

"You killed him!"

"Well, it was either him or you, and he's not nearly as attractive."

"Lance, what the hell is going on in here?"

"Doesn't matter right now." Lance scrambled to his feet and grabbed Kitty's shoulder, just to make sure she was real. Satisfied that she wasn't a figment of his imagination, he looked to Pietro. Pietro had taken Fury's advice on human shields and was locked in a shootout with a man just as ugly as Lance's aggressor had been bellicose.

Lance ended it by shooting the unaware hag in the temple.

"Killing spree," he muttered in a video-game voice. He didn't feel any of the accomplishment that came in games. "C'mon, Pietro. We've got a ticket out of here."

"Pryde," said Pietro, getting to his feet. His shield rolled over as it hit the ground, a tangle of arms and legs and bullet-holes. "Never been so happy to see an X-Man."

"We don't want you going out the way you came," said Drew's voice in a burst of static.

Lance mumbled his appreciation. "Oh fuck this."

"We've got a tactical team outside the Club, and they're about to go in," continued Drew, undaunted. "There's going to be cops and S.W.A.T. as well, and officially you guys were never supposed to be here. We can't have lower-level officials seeing you, and the girl just complicates things."

"I assume there's a back exit."

"We've accessed their mainframe, and it appears there is. Continue down that hallway. You'll come to a large foyer with barracks, conference rooms, and other such commodities."

Pietro snapped his former shield's pinky with his shoe. "What is this, a fortress?"

"Yes," said Drew straightly. "Continue past the foyer and there will be a tunnel. We believe they use that for their vehicles. You know how to hotwire a vehicle, correct?"

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

"I'm not kidding, Alvers. Make sure you bring a couple guns. I'm sorry. We need you alive, but we can't do this the easy way this time."

"We never do it the easy way."

"You're in S.H.I.E.L.D. Get over it."

Lance couldn't argue with that.

"What is it?" asked Kitty, and he realized that she hadn't heard Drew's end of the conversation.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. wants us to go out the back way," grunted Lance. "Something about visibility."

_Ignoring the fact we'll be seen by every employee in the Club on our way out_, he didn't add.

"And why is that a problem?"

"The back way includes a run through a big foyer with barracks, among other things."

"Oh."

"I hope you know by barracks I don't mean a large housing unit," interrupted Drew. "They have about twenty staff, and there's living space for them, in addition to living space for the upper members. It's not what you're thinking. They're not an army. You've already taken out about eight of them."

"Oh goody," Pietro replied. "And we've only encountered one mutant."

"Good luck," Drew offered. "And don't forget the hard drive."

The communication ended. Pietro, with all the air of a comedian at a funeral, remarked, "I think she cares more about the hard drive than she does about our live bodies."

"I think you're right," Lance said, humorless.

"I can hear you," Drew reminded them.

"She didn't deny it."

Pietro rounded up a load of weapons. Lance took a second handgun and the shotgun; Pietro procured for himself some kind of semi-automatic; and Kitty gingerly accepted a pistol.

"I'm not shooting this thing," she said.

"It's simple," replied Pietro. "You pull down on the trigger."

"I'm not shooting this thing."

"The safety's off. Don't worry."

Despite Kitty's reluctance to accept the gift, Lance noticed that she did not throw it by the wayside. Self-preservation always won out over guilt.

"The hard drive, Pietro."

"Got it." Pietro was at the computers, and then he wasn't. "All right. It's in my pocket. That means that you guys have to protect me with your lives. If I die we lose the hard drive."

Lance smirked and noted, "We could always just carry your body back."

"I was hoping you wouldn't catch that." Something dawned on Pietro's face, a glimmer of sunlight over a valley of stupidity. "Hey, Drew, what if we dressed up as these guards? Would that buy us time?"

"Besides the fact that there are bullet-holes and blood all over the uniforms?"

"Yeah, besides that."

"Sure, why not. Just hurry up already."

In a magnificent flurry of motion lasting somewhere around ten seconds Pietro changed uniforms. He grinned at his slower comrades. "Your turn, suckers."

Kitty hesitated as Pietro threw a female guard's body at her feet.

Lance unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. "What?" he said, noticing their stares. "Isn't nothing you haven't seen before."

"Could you –"

"Fine, I'm turning around."

And the two honored the statement. Still, Lance couldn't help but see out of the corner of his eye that Kitty faced away from him as she undressed down to her undergarments, as if that really mattered. The only thing that had changed was that instead catching the curve of her breast he caught the curve of her ass, and he didn't mind the difference.

_Focus, Alvers. Eyes ahead. Chivalry and other such bullshit._

Lance buttoned up his shirt and picked up his rightfully stolen shotgun. "Done?"

"Yes," said Kitty, and Lance was disappointed to find that the uniform was not low-cut. _Pig_, he thought in a characteristic fit of self-incrimination. "Let's go."

They had reached as far as the door to the foyer when a guard stepped out from another room. "Hey, I don't recognize you guys!"

Lance hit him in the chin with the butt of the shotgun. Noticing Pietro's frown, he said, "What? We don't have to _shoot_ everybody, you know. Murdering psychopath."

He thought he saw Kitty smile beside him.

Pietro kicked open the door with typical drama. Below them lay the basin of a network of illegal activity – guards rushed from left to right, screaming into their headsets, and a row of cars, ranging from luxury to sports utility, lined the far wall next to the tunnel that would be their eventual getaway.

"Hey," said another guard at the base of the stairwell. "I don't recognize you guys!"

"Not again," muttered Lance, and just as Pietro was about to shoot the stupid bastard in the head, Lance stomped his foot onto the ground and sent a tremor that knocked everyone over. Pietro's bullet missed by three feet.

"Lethal force has been authorized, Lance," Pietro growled.

"Doesn't mean we need to promote it!" Lance barked back. "Go to the car, we'll meet you there."

Pietro didn't waste further time arguing. He'd always been an impatient prick.

The man Lance had knocked over with the tremor was getting up now, and he was not duly appreciative of the fact that Lance had saved his life. Before the man could aim his handgun and fire at the pair his wrist was pierced by a bullet, and he fell to the ground screaming.

"He's not dead, at least," Lance said when Kitty accosted him with a dark look. "Pietro was going to shoot him in the head."

They flew down the steps, but halfway through they were forced to duck as a hail of bullet fire sprayed over their heads. Kitty grabbed his hand and they began to sink through the stairs, until they fell to the ground underneath. Lance could see in between the steps the body of the guard, still writhing around in pain, and he tugged at Kitty's arm. Without words, she recognized his request, and she stepped forward to allow him to pass through the stairs. Still holding onto Kitty, Lance grabbed a grenade off the man's belt, and he passed back through the stairs.

"Phase me," Lance said as he undid the clip on the grenade. Kitty kept her hold on him as he stuck his arm through the wall to his right and threw the grenade into the middle of the foyer.

Five seconds later he was rewarded with a resounding _boom_. Nodding to his counterpart, they stepped through the wall. Smoke slightly clouded their vision, but he could tell that no one had been hit directly by the grenade, and he felt a hint of relief knowing that.

"Nice one, Lancey," Pietro's voice crackled into his earpiece. "I'm hotwiring a car right now. I've brought down two guys, but I need you to cover me. They've got a mutant."

"Pietro needs us to cover him," Lance told Kitty. "Which car, Pietro?"

"The Aston Martin."

"I should have guessed. Hang on."

Lance knocked over a few guards behind them with another tremor, and together the two sprinted toward the row of cars. A tall, lithe man stomped towards a black Aston Martin, his gun glowing purple. Lance tried to shoot him with the handgun, but the bullet seemed to be absorbed into the violet aura surrounding the man. Seconds later the man thrust out his hand and a bolt of energy seared towards them, only to pass through as Kitty's grip tightened on his wrist.

Dropping his handgun, Lance grabbed the shotgun from his hoister on his back and made a desperate attempt to shoot the man one-handedly. Whether his bullet hit its target, Lance would never know, as the backlash from the shot sent him sprawling, Kitty dragged to the ground with him.

"That was a bad idea," Kitty muttered as she helped him to his feet.

Lance said nothing and was only moderately appeased by the fact that the mutant guard had also been knocked over, but he didn't appear to have sustained any serious damage. The guard rose and began charging up for another attack.

"Jesus," Lance breathed.

Before the man could attack again, there was a flash of black and the man was sent flying into the wall, courtesy of an Aston Martin.

The window rolled down and Pietro's face became visible. "Get in, already!"

Another round of bullet fire punctuated Pietro's demand, and it was only through Kitty's quick thinking and fortunate talent that the two made it into the car safely. Some small part of Lance was sad to see the Aston Martin get pierced with bullets; there were some parts of Dominic he'd never really been able to exorcise.

"The cavalry's arrived," Lance said after taking a glimpse through the cracked window. A group of guards pushed into the foyer, guns in hands.

The car swung into reverse and then, violently, back into drive. Tires squealed as the car began to shoot forward into the tunnel, and a bullet just nearly missed Lance's head and embedded itself into the back of Pietro's seat.

"Alvers." It was Drew. "We've affirmed that the tunnel is self-supporting –"

"And what's _that _supposed to mean?"

"It means," said Drew calmly, "that you can go ahead and bring it down behind you without endangering civilian life above. S.H.I.E.L.D. will deal with it later. We don't want anyone following you."

"Are you ordering me to bring this place down?" asked Lance.

"In a word: yes."

"You just made my day, Ms. Drew," Lance said, grinning. He faced Kitty. "You ready to phase us if things get a little too heavy?"

Kitty nodded.

"All right, 'Tro," Lance stated as he turned around to face the entrance to the tunnel. "Let's see how fast this thing can go."

"You just made my day, Alvers," Pietro echoed, and the Aston Martin shot forward.

It was difficult to get a lock on the entrance of the tunnel while they were moving farther and farther away, but eventually he was able to steady himself and get a feel for the weak points. In a perfect world, he'd be standing on the ground, but he was well accustomed to a non-perfect world so he made do.

His temple throbbed, and blood filled his mouth as he bit his tongue. For a second he thought he was going to pass out from the pain manifesting inside his head, but he held out, just a moment longer. He thought he felt Kitty's hand on his own, but he wasn't sure.

A second later and the tunnel began to collapse on itself.

Lance opened his eyes, unaware they'd ever been closed. He looked to Kitty, and her hand was now several inches from his own. Her expression was unreadable.

"Shit, Lance," Pietro growled. "Accuracy was never your thing, was it?"

"What?" Lance shot a glance behind them, and he realized that the tunnel was collapsing nearer than he'd anticipated. "Oh. Well. Shit."

"God damn it, why can't this car go faster? And how long is this fucking tunnel?"

"I can try to hold it up," Lance mentioned. "I tried it on that Cuban mission. Didn't work that well, but I can try."

"Well, try, damn it! Make yourself useful!"

In any other situation Lance would have found Pietro's panic amusing, but he was too uneasy himself to fully enjoy the hyperactive anxiety that was so typical of his partner. He focused on the ground and the structure of the tunnel: he tried to will the structure to stay put, but he couldn't tell how much it was working.

"There's too much metal," he grunted. There was no exit in sight. "Damn it, how do we get out of here? I don't see an exit."

"Well, there _is_ an exit," said Drew, sounding uncharacteristically contrite. "But we didn't open it, and now that you've screwed up the tunnel there's no chance for us to open it."

"Oh great," Pietro groaned. "Great job, that."

"What is it?" Kitty asked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. forgot to open the back door." Lance stopped trying to hold up the tunnel. It was just a waste of effort. "How far are we?"

"About two hundred feet, I think."

"Is it that big metallic wall?" Pietro deadpanned. The metal loomed in front of them, quickly approaching. "Should I slow down?"

"No time for that," Lance stated, gesturing to the crumbling tunnel behind them. He looked at Kitty. "You ready to do this?"

She attempted a smile, but it came out sickly and confused. "Yeah."

"You got it, Pietro. Drive on, you crazy diamond."

"I hate that album," Pietro said as the car made impact with the large steel door.

Or would have made impact, if Kitty hadn't been with them. For an exhilarating two seconds Lance thought he was dead, but then the sun was above them and they were on a quiet stretch of road overlooking a lake. He glanced behind and saw no door, only the stone face of a hill.

"We're alive," announced Pietro redundantly.

The hill shuddered off a mass of pebbles and stones.

"I think the tunnel has collapsed," Kitty said, with equal parts humor and relief.

"C'mon, Pietro," Lance said as he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. "Let's get out of here."

"Not so fast." It was Drew again, but this time, it wasn't the communicator. Lance opened his eyes and saw Drew standing outside their car, an unreadable expression on her face. "Our agents are going to dispose of this car. In the meantime, I'm going to drive you three back to the hotel. You have a flight later tonight."

"The black SUV? Seriously, Drew, that is _so_ cliché." Pietro hopped out of the broken window and Lance got out, holding open the door for Kitty. "I call shotgun!"

Lance grinned.


	11. My Ride into the Sunset

Again, I fail at updating, but this is it, so there'll be no more worries about that. To everyone who has stuck with me and read and reviewed: thank you, and my quasi-eternal apologies for being lazy and a buffoon. This was an appropriate time to end this, though, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

And let me just say to Fox, while I'm on my soapbox: I honestly don't care what the hell you do with the X-Men movies anymore, but if you or Marvel bring back a certain teenage rockhead (not named Petros or Rictor) then I will squee like a three-year-old girl trying her first lollipop. I promise.'

As usual, I own nothing.

* * *

_Eleven: My Ride into the Sunset_

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_

Sometimes when you have a near-death experience it changes your outlook on life. The media loves these types of stories. The public adores them as well: everyone loves reading about the beauty of second chances as they sit in a too-small living room in a too-small apartment or house on a rare day off from a job they hate. Sometimes when you have a near-death experience, you fall into a tailspin. The media loves these types of stories even more than the feel-good stories. If there's anything the average reader loves more than knowing that there is a possibility of escape from the hellhole that is modern life, it's knowing that others have screwed up their lives and hopes and dreams even more than the average reader has.

Sometimes when you have a near-death experience, it makes you hungry.

Kitty thought of this as she sat in a diner with three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, one humorless and two anything but. She'd heard that the first thing Tony Stark had asked for upon his return from captivity in the Middle East had been a cheeseburger. Lance was currently enjoying a Philly cheesesteak and Pietro was digging into a country-fried steak, but it was the idea rather than the specifics, really.

Drew ate nothing, content with her water. Kitty wondered what this said about the S.H.I.E.L.D. commander.

"We should be leaving," said Drew. Kitty deciphered this as: _"Let's get out of here so I can ditch you amateurs. I've got places to go, people to kill, governments to overthrow."_

Lance was unconcerned with timeliness. No surprise there. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s paying for this lunch, right? Business expense?"

"You're on the clock until eight o'clock tonight, so I guess so."

"Good." Lance stuffed a last piece of bread into his mouth, took a few moments to chew, and then swallowed. "That was a good appetizer. I think I'll get some fried eggs. You like eggs, Drew?"

"I like eggs," said Pietro.

"Eggs are delicious," Lance replied, sneering. "Of course you like them."

But Pietro just smirked and it became apparent to Kitty that they had reverted back to high school and Drew was just an uptight teacher or a know-it-all sitting in the front row and they were the two losers doing their best to annoy her. For some reason this made Kitty happy to know that no matter what they'd gone through they'd still retained some sense of immaturity. Part of this happiness also stemmed from the fact that Lance was very openly uninterested in his beautiful superior who enjoyed low-cut tops and short skirts and strawberry lip gloss. (Kitty preferred peppermint.)

A drumroll from Drew's fingers against the surface of the table. "Everyone's staring at us."

"At least we took off the bloody clothes," Pietro said. His eyes locked onto the form of an approaching waitress. "Everyone in here would be really freaked out if they knew we were about to rob this place."

The waitress nearly dropped her tray. Drew held out her hand and offered the young girl several quiet words of reassurance while Pietro snickered.

"Why did you do that?" Drew asked as the girl walked away.

Pietro shrugged, a nonverbal "Why not?"

"I feel like I'm in _Pulp Fiction_," Lance stated. "Where's Tim Roth? Isn't he supposed to have shot this place up by now?"

"I always feel like I'm in a Tarentino movie when I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D.," Pietro remarked. "They clean stuff up like those gangsters in the movies. Make stuff disappear."

"We _do_ currently employ the Wolf," Drew said. She flushed as everyone stared at her. "I have a sense of humor, kids."

Kitty thought one of the two would protest the condescending title, but neither did. Lance belched, though. "That was delicious. Where's that waitress? I want some eggs."

"Eggs are delicious," Pietro repeated. "I want to be Mr. Pink."

"I could've guessed that, 'Tro. It's good that you're finally embracing who you are. Pietro almost rhymes with metro, even."

"Very funny, jackass. I said that because he's the only one that lives in the end. And he runs off with the diamonds."

This was a topic for serious conversation, so Lance actually threw his body up and his elbows onto the table, a magnificent feat considering the large amount of cheesesteak affecting his center of gravity. "What about Orange? You never really see if White kills him."

"Why do you think the cops shot him? Of course he shot Orange. It was dumb of Orange to tell the guy that he was a cop, though."

"Maybe Mr. Orange actually had some moral code," Kitty injected. She found herself encountered by the same looks Drew had provoked only moments before. "It's one of Logan's favorite movies. And it's not nearly as bloody as everyone says it is."

"Yeah." Disappointment crossed over Pietro's face in a sigh. "It's badass when Blonde cuts off that cop's ear, though. Wish he would've gotten to set him on fire."

Lance laughed. "You _are _one sick sadistic son of a bitch, aren't you? I'm not sleeping in the same house as you any more. You might be watching me sleep or something."

"Sadism isn't the same as sexual perversion, dummy."

"Whatever. Perversion is perversion."

"At least _I_ don't get all high and mighty when we're in a freaking gunfight," Pietro countered. He shared a conspiratorial glance with Drew. "Did you hear this lug over here during that fight? He wouldn't kill anyone. He shot to disarm and he bashed some guy's face in but he wouldn't kill anyone when our lives were threatened."

"I put a bullet through a guy's skull," Lance muttered, all humor gone, hidden somewhere down in his stomach with the steak and grilled onions. "I shot a guy in the wrist." Some trace of a smirk. "And I put a bullet in between a werewolf's eyes. But that doesn't mean I have to go around killing everyone just because I've got a government pass."

"Doesn't mean you have to act like a pussy, either."

"I did what I had to do."

It was hard for Kitty to resist from grabbing Lance's hand. His cheek had never looked more kissable, nor his shoulder more comfortable.

"You both have your points," said the government-issued bombshell. "Alvers, I know you have hang-ups about killing people when it's not strictly necessary, but I know Fury doesn't have the time to deal with your ethical dilemmas. I'm surprised he even has enough time on his hands to have any sort of regular contact with you at all, but that's probably because of the politics of having an all-mutant team. It's fine to have some mercy as long as it doesn't affect your reflexes. You need to be ready to kill instantaneously without spending a moment debating the merits in your head. That moment could be the difference between life and death."

"Fair enough," said Lance. "But if I've got another way to incapacitate someone I'm gonna do it. So you know."

"In most situations that's fine. But Maximoff, you also need to know that not every situation calls for shooting your way out of hell, even if you've been given the go-ahead by S.H.I.E.L.D. brass. Sometimes it's best to use stealth. Sometimes it's best to show a little mercy. Far too often I've seen good kids enter S.H.I.E.L.D. and slowly lose themselves to the process. They become killing machines, but they're not even people any more. After a while they begin to become erratic. Ever since Vietnam we've been doing a lot of studies on the psyche of our soldiers and operatives. You may have heard some of the controversy over the mental condition of the soldiers of _this_ war. We need our operatives to be emotionally _and_ physically healthy. If we determine you've become too bloodthirsty, we'll take you out of action. There are times for mercilessness, but those situations are fortunately rare."

Pietro said nothing and shrugged.

"I want some eggs," Lance said.

"I guess this conversation is over."

Lance's mouth stretched back in a pseudo-smirk.

Eventually Lance got his eggs and an uneasy dialogue continued without Lance to act as buffer between Drew and Kitty. Even with their history, Kitty still felt more at ease with Lance than she did with Pietro. Maybe you couldn't help but establish (or reestablish) some sort of bond when you ran through bullets together.

Drew paid the bill and they headed out for the SUV. Pietro took the front, which was no shock – typical hyper-competitive behavior – and the one-time couple shuffled into the backseat. Drew took her seat in the front and started the ignition, looking at Kitty through the mirror.

"Should I drop you off at their hotel or is there someplace else you need to go?"

"My dorm would be nice," Kitty said. She gave Drew the address and the agent typed it into the fancy silver GPS with her neatly trimmed fingernails.

The conversation that had thrived in the diner seemed to die in the leather confines of the hybrid. The affluent lakeside area of Chicago passed by them in a flurry of brick and low-hanging trees. Kitty thought of her parents, blissfully unaware that their daughter had just spent the last hour and a half in the company of so-called secret agents and black market bullets.

Slowly the brick turned into concrete and skyscrapers jutted out of the ground like the cemeteries of giants buried six hundred feet below. Somewhere lay Northwestern's Chicago campus; the Hancock Center; the Sears Tower and Soldier Field. Kitty's dorm, however, was much more unassuming, and Drew somehow pulled into a parking space that had never been there before with a jarring halt.

"Before you leave, I would like to request that you keep this under wraps," stated Drew without looking backwards. "I understand that you may be compelled to tell some of your old friends what has happened, but with the exception of Xavier himself, I ask you to refrain. I'm not overly concerned that your knowledge will compromise this operation, so don't think we're following you or anything. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s learned our lesson about the loyalty of X-Men. But this is an important mission, and it's necessary that it remains covert. Your own safety is affected by this."

"I understand," Kitty said. "My lips are sealed."

"Good."

Lance was determined to stare out the window rather than at her, and Pietro had dozed off against the window, so Kitty stepped outside without fanfare.

Then, abruptly: "Our flight's not 'til later. Want to grab dinner?"

"Sure," she said, smiling at Lance. The window was now ignored. "Later, though. I've got some stuff to take care of. Call me."

"Okay. Bye."

Kitty swung the door shut and the car shot backwards, stopped, and then sped forward down the street. It occurred to her that she had never told Drew her name or that she had been an X-Man, but then again, Drew had never asked about her at all, and it was safe to assume that as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent she was already well aware of the identities of all once or current X-Men.

Kitty set off for her dorm room with a sense of purpose. She didn't even notice the stairs as she ascended them: her mind was set on another subject entirely. The last three months suddenly seemed so trivial. In the heat of battle once more, Kitty had felt more at home than she had since she'd left Xavier and the X-Men. Perhaps there had been some unwanted mental side effects from saving the world from a maniacal time-traveling mutant.

Alison was not there to greet her when she entered their room, which was for the better. Kitty went straight for her desk. Her physics textbook sat in front of the keyboard, and they glared at each other for a moment before she picked it up and tossed it forcefully behind the chair. It skidded into the wall with a pleasant thud.

She waited several seconds for her desktop to load before finding a little-used program and opening it. The wireless connection was often very shaky, but thankfully today everything seemed to be running at full speed, and Kitty checked her webcam to make sure it was positioned correctly. After several diagnostics tests, the computer began the slow process of connecting with the other end, and eventually Kitty was greeted with a welcome sight.

"Kitty," said Professor Xavier, staring into his own computer screen. "What a pleasant surprise. I see that the program's working."

"Yes, Professor," Kitty replied. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No, not at all." Xavier smiled as if someone had just delivered a very funny joke. Not too many people smiled at Kitty like that. "I was actually paying some bills, so I guess you _are_ interrupting something. But don't worry, I'm not at all irritated. Feel free to interrupt me every time I'm stuck doing these calculations."

"Will do, Professor. Listen, I know it's kind of random, but let's just say this call has been a long time coming and some events today have kind of spurred me on. I know what I'm about to say is going to seem impulsive and kind of petulant, but I know deep down this is something I need. You probably need some background for all of this, so let's just say it started two days ago when Lance and Pietro showed up in town."

Xavier's eyebrows arched upward, crested above the smooth wrinkles of his lightly tanned forehead. "Lance, you say?"

"Yeah, Lance. I know, we kind of had a fight when I saw him on Friday. Long story." Kitty attempted a chuckle. It was almost genuine. "But anyway, it turned out they were working a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. at some place called the Hellfire Club."

"I've heard of it. Are you sure you're cleared to tell me this?"

"Drew said I could, but only you."

"Good." Xavier's eyes narrowed and he sighed. "I've heard of this place many times before. I was actually invited to be a member but it was just as I was starting the Institute so I declined the invitation. For a while I regretted my choice – I began to think that perhaps the Club would be full of potential financiers for my cause – but recent developments have caused me to be glad of my decision. I'm aware that many of the Club's members are involved in dangerous affairs."

"I actually don't know much, since I didn't ask, but apparently it's pretty serious. Pietro told me they'd be there on Sunday, so, being the total doofus I am, I went there. I decided to go looking for them behind some armored door, since I figured Lance and Pietro would probably be attracted to something like that, and I nearly got my head shot off. Turns out Lance and Pietro had set off the alarm. We pretty much had to shoot our way out."

"Yes?"

"Not me." Kitty bit her lip. "I don't like that stuff. Pietro, though, is a total psycho. He got off on shooting people and stuff. Lance tried not to kill if it wasn't necessary."

Xavier smiled. "Yes, that's no surprise. Pietro's violence is disturbing, but also not a surprise. His father, after all… but if Erik can change, so can Pietro. Lance will be a sobering influence on him."

"Yeah, I hope. We don't need a Magneto Junior on our hands," Kitty said. "But anyways. We got out of there fine, but that leads me to my point. The thing is, I've been having a lot of second thoughts about university. Everyone here is so _different._ My roommate, I thought she was an idiot at first, but she's actually pretty smart, and she's one of the only ones around here that can stand me. My professors are mostly all right, and I like the subjects I'm studying, but it's just not been fun."

"That was to be expected, Kitty," said Xavier in a tired voice. "You should have gotten used to it at Bayville High."

"I know, I did. Don't get me wrong, it's not that. I could deal with all of that if I felt like I actually needed to be here." Kitty pressed her palms to the desk and straightened her back. "I'm having second thoughts, and it has nothing to do with the mean people around here. I'm going to college to major in physics, but what am I planning on doing with a physics major? You know what I see myself doing in four years? I see myself either going back to the X-Men or taking some other role in the fight for mutant rights. When I hear everyone talking about the latest mission or the good you guys have been doing – not just in _battles_, but diplomatically! – it makes me jealous. All of this seems so unimportant right now. Maybe I want to go to college and study physics or diplomacy or international relations, but more than anything I want to be in the middle of the fight. I feel like I'm wasting four years, and that I've still got a lot to offer to the X-Men."

For a long time Xavier studied her, and Kitty briefly wondered if he was reading her mind before remembering that they were far too apart for that, no matter how misleading the webcam could be. "Very well. I've heard the others speak about your troubles at college, and I thought it might be something like this, but I hoped against it. Going to college is a wonderful experience, and it can change you as a person. If you want to return, you may, but I hope you've thought this out and you're not doing this for… other reasons."

"Professor, I don't even know if Lance and I are on speaking terms or if that's just because of the camaraderie from getting shot at," Kitty said as bluntly as she could. "I miss my other friends, but honestly I was looking forward to meeting new people and all that. I just need to be home making a difference. It's become clearer and clearer to me that Bayville, in some sense, is where I belong. I think… I think that I still want to go to college. I want to take classes, at least. I like school. But I want to focus more on diplomacy, I think, and I want to go to a school in New York where I can stay close to the action. I want to be an X-Man again."

"And I believe you." Xavier smiled once more. "Your parents really aren't going to like this."

"They can deal with it. I want to be an X-Man, if you'll have me. I want to go to college and be an X-Man, if time allows."

"I wholeheartedly agree," Xavier replied. "Some of my other students, I've thought that they've done wonderful jobs for the X-Men, but that their interests ultimately lie in other things. You, however, have seemed different from the start. I think you're more ambitious than Jean or Scott – I think at one point or another you will make a _wonderful_ politician, and I mean that as a compliment – but the mutant cause is extremely important to you. I thought you'd become an X-Man once more, and I looked forward to the day. I'm sorry it had to come under such circumstances, but I'll begin looking into college transfer opportunities and get back to you. We can pick you up tomorrow if you're ready."

"I'll talk to the office," said Kitty. "My tuition's already paid, so that's not good, but who knows. Maybe we can work something out. Thanks, Professor. I know I seem like I'm making an impulse decision, but I'm really not. This is what I know is right."

"I don't need to read your mind to believe you. But I'll have someone call you later tonight, perhaps Rogue, as soon as I know more. Have fun on your last day as a student there."

"I will, Professor."

Xavier's smile seemed to be permanent. "Goodbye, Kitty."

"Bye, Professor."

The video cut off, and with it seemed to go the interminable pressure that had been building up inside of Kitty. She danced around the room as she began packing up her clothes and possessions, which wasn't a very hard job since she'd never really fully unpacked, almost as if she had been waiting for this moment to arrive. In a way she had, and that just strengthened her own belief that she had done the right thing. She was going home. She was going to be an X-Man again, to make a difference again. Never before had she felt so impulsively sure of her own rightness.

_Once you own it, nothing can own you._

A scared high school freshman, a grinning senior. Fast forward three years; a confident, intelligent young woman and an embittered youth. Fast forward another three months and you got something in the middle: a scared girl who had never been so confident in herself and a notoriously headstrong man who was still an angry kid prone to fits of unpredictability and laughter. They were the perfect pair.

She ran her fingers over her right palm, where the gun had rested in her hand. _I'm gonna rock your world._ Gunfire all around her. The vague thought in the back of her head that she should banish all morals and shoot back. The thought vanishing as she witnessed the restraint of the supposedly rash man beside her, doing his best not to take another life for nothing.

_This is the real you, isn't it?_

He grinned at her as he handed her the ice cream cone he'd paid for with the money he'd been earning from his government work. It was summer and one of the first times in a while he'd been able to buy her something. The bills were paid on time, for once.

He led her by the hand down the street and into an uncertain future.

_You're with me now._

-

"Take off your pants and put these on."

"What've you got in there, Drew? Assless chaps?" Pietro winked at her and Lance began to anticipate seeing a fist fly from the driver's seat into the passenger's face. Then he remembered that Drew was far too robotically calm for that to happen. But a guy could dream. "I don't know. It feels like we're moving a little fast in this relationship."

"Maximoff, I've castrated a man before. Don't think I won't do it again." It was funny how smirks could just vanish without a trace. "Now, take off _all_ your clothes and put these on. I don't want anyone to connect you with your inducer images, so, unfortunately, that means you two need to change. That's the price of stopping at that diner. Now do it before things get violent."

"Uh, here you go, Lancey," Pietro said as he handed Lance a pair of jeans and a shirt. "Stop looking so hesitant. You heard the lady."

Pietro finished first, unsurprisingly. Even though there was generous legroom in the back compared to his old Jeep, Lance had a lot of trouble changing his pants. Somehow, though, he managed, and he was just zipping up his zipper as they pulled in front of the hotel.

"I assume you can make it up to your hotel room without me," she said in an attempt at droll humor. "You'll be contacted about your flight arrangements in the coming hours. Stay around the hotel, and get your bags packed right away. I'd recommend keeping a gun on your person at all times."

"I've always got some guns on my person," Pietro replied. He rolled up one of his sleeves and grinned. "You just got free tickets to the gun show!"

Lance thought the world might be ending. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. "Sweet Jesus…"

Drew's mouth betrayed half a chuckle, but her S.H.I.E.L.D. training cut in after that and Pietro was the only one left smiling.

"Ah, you guys suck. But we got you that flash drive, didn't we? We did our jobs."

"As much as I hate to admit it, you did," Drew conceded. "You did it in a completely unprofessional manner, but you got the job done."

"Exactly!" Pietro jutted his cheek out towards his superior officer and tapped it with one long finger. "C'mon, Drew. Just one kiss on the cheek for all my hard work."

Drew considered the open cheek. She grabbed his face with one hand and turned it towards her so the two stared at each other eye to eye. For one brief moment of hope Lance thought she was going to slap Pietro silly.

She didn't. Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to Pietro's greedily. His eyes remained wide open in shock.

Two seconds later she withdrew, and now it was her turn to smirk. She lightly patted Pietro's cheek as a smile came over his face.

"There you go," she said.

"I knew you liked me," boasted Pietro.

Drew licked her lips, but the smirk did not dissipate. "I don't know. You could definitely use a lot of practice. Use some of the money we're paying you and hire a hooker. At least she'll pretend to like it when you kiss her."

She threw a glance at Lance and he thought he caught the most discreet of winks. He returned the gesture with a beaming face.

"Toodles."

She pushed Pietro's face out of the window and drove off, leaving the silver-haired mutant gobsmacked. Lance could hold in his laughter no longer, and with one exhaling breath let his friend know just what he'd thought of that little spectacle.

"Shut up, you sound like a hyena," said Pietro grumpily. "At least I got a kiss."

"Apparently you didn't give her back much in return," Lance chortled.

"Shut up." Pietro wore a scowl for their entire walk into the hotel. Finally, he brightened, as if he'd stumbled upon one piece of candy in a cesspool of shit. "She used her tongue, you know."

"Oh, is that why you were staring at her like an idiot?"

"She used her tongue," Pietro said again. "It was delicious."

"What? I like tongue and all, but delicious?"

"I hate you, you no-good white trash scumbag," Pietro said as they pushed through the hotel lobby.

Lance followed his friend into the elevator. "And I hate you, you vain prepubescent excuse of a man."

"I love you, man," Pietro sighed, throwing his arm around Lance's neck.

"Feeling's mutual, 'Tro."

They found their room and along with it Lance found that sifting sense of fear that always used to encroach upon his mind before a date with Kitty. And, it occurred to him as he sat on top of his bed without any shoes on, sipping a Sprite, he had just asked Kitty to have dinner with him.

"You gonna call Kitty?"

Pietro had the most annoying habit of reminding you of things that most preferably would have remained forgotten.

"Yeah," Lance said. "In a second."

That second dragged on into minutes and nearly into an hour. At the fifty-eighth minute, midway through a Jeopardy rerun, Lance grabbed his crotch with one hand and pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket with the other.

"Why did you just grope yourself?" Pietro asked over his magazine (_Vogue_ – Lance had snickered when he'd first seen it).

"Making sure I still have my balls," Lance replied. "I do. So I guess it's time to man up and call her, huh?"

Before Lefty and Righty were formally excommunicated from the Province of Alveronia for cowardice in the face of womanhood, Lance pressed down for his contact list, hit 5 twice for K, and pressed the big scary green phone button.

Three and a half seconds later the call connected with the best damn greeting a guy could ever expect: "Hey!"

There were other contenders for the title – "Oh thank God you called, I'm so horny right now," or "I've got great news, I'm not pregnant!" being two of the favorites – but in Lance's eyes there was nothing better than the old classic. He didn't know for sure, but he imagined that when Christian Crusaders had sent letters back to their wives in Italy and France and all that shit, their wives had probably started off their replies with the medieval Romantic language version of "Hey!" (Of course, Lance thought, the husbands and wives probably went on to leave out in their letters that they were each respectively banging other people, but the analogy still stood.)

"Hey!" wasn't like "Hello!" or "Hi," even. "Hey!" meant, _Hello, I've been waiting to talk to you all day! I'm so glad you called!_ "Hey!" usually ended up in a great conversation, sometimes lasting fifteen minutes, sometimes lasting two hours.

When Kitty said, "Hey!" Lance knew it would be a great conversation.

"Hey, Pretty Kitty," he said, and for a second he convinced himself that they were just two kids in high school and the rest of the world didn't matter so much. "So you promised me we could go to dinner together, and you know I always collect on my promises."

"You do," she replied. He thought – he hoped – that he caught the trace of levity in her voice that he'd so desperately missed these last few months. "So, do you have any bright ideas?"

"Actually, I've got one. Remember my hotel?"

"How could I forget? It's only like the nicest place I've ever been in my life."

He chuckled. "Yeah, you're preachin' to the choir. Anyways, there's a pizza place down the block, I think. I figure that'll do."

"We always did love pizza," Kitty murmured. "What time's your flight?"

"No effing clue. Typical S.H.I.E.L.D. They're not so good at getting memos around. I should probably be back here around seven, I think… that's a safe guess. Probably. Why don't we say we'll meet up at that place in two hours? I know we just ate and everything, but that gives us a little time to get our stuff together and, uh, digest."

The beginning of a laugh. Lance wanted nothing more than to pursue that isolated strand, to exploit it, but there would be plenty of time for that later. "Okay. Two hours. You better not be late, Alvers."

"I'm never late, Pryde." Lance grin stretched all the way to the phone. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, later. Bye!"

He hung up and placed the phone back in his pocket. His delusions of grandeur were broken by a snort.

"Isn't that sweet."

"Shut the hell up."

"Aw, is Lancey-poo getting angry?"

"Shut the hell up, _Pi, _or I will crack your collector's edition DVD of _Dreamgirls_ when we get back home."

Pietro turned to the TV with a frown, grumbling, "I was just messing with you."

Lance laughed and turned his attention back to Alex Trabek.

-

"_Once, just once, Alvers, could you try to be early?"_

"_Sure, Mr. Penty," Lance said as he sat down in his desk. Todd hid his snicker in a cough, hurriedly wiping off the resulting goo from his desk._

"_Well, let's see it, then," said Penty, a balding man of about fifty, although his heart was about twenty years ahead of his age – he'd suffered two heart attacks. "Someday something will be important enough to you that you'll show up early. Hopefully."_

Poor old Penty would've been proud of Lance if he'd been around to see this spectacle (and if he'd even remembered who Lance was). Here Lance was, sitting on a bench outside a pizzeria, five minutes early.

Something was important enough, apparently.

Lance whistled a Pixies tune and thought about that fat bastard Penty, wondered if he'd dropped dead from another heart attack. Probably not. The dude just didn't seem to die easily. That wasn't a bad thing – as far as uptight white Baby Boomer teachers went, Penty wasn't that terrible. His class was boring as hell, but he didn't seem to appreciate detention as much as some of Lance's other teachers had.

His reverie was cut short when his eyes were drawn toward the sidewalk not ten feet away from him. His whistling trailed off on a high note as he sat facing the thing that was important enough for him to actually get his ass somewhere on time for once. He meekly whistled one last note. Some part of him had lamented the fact that he'd never resolved the song, and now he'd satisfied that bizarre urge.

"You look great," he said.

"Thanks." He wanted to tell her that no gratitude was required. He hadn't meant to say it, after all; it had just slipped out. And she _did_ look great, hair let down and her old favorite pink blouse on under her jacket, and those jeans that hugged her narrow hips. "You're early. You're never early for anything."

"I'm always on time for jobs," he replied, and for the most part it was the truth.

"But you're never early for anything!"

He didn't see the point of arguing, since she had him beat. "All right, I'm early. Pietro was annoying the freaking shit out of me. You caught me."

She took a step forward at him and he pressed his back up against the bench before realizing he was more caught than he had previously guessed.

"We should go inside," she muttered.

"Inside. Right-o." She offered him a hand to help him up, and he took it. "The finest pizzeria in all of Chicago."

"How would you know?"

Lance held open the door for her and she shuffled inside. "The sign says so."

They were led to a comfortable booth by the hostess and Lance took his seat across from Kitty. She flipped through the menu, blissfully unaware of his unrelenting gaze focused on her eyelashes.

"What are you thinking about getting?" she asked.

"Pizza."

"Well, they have different kinds, you know, it's a totally new concept and everything but –"

A waiter cut off Kitty's pleasantly sarcastic diatribe with his arrival. "Hello, may I take your drink orders?"

"Water," Kitty said.

"Water," Lance echoed. The waiter nodded and hurried away.

"Today was pretty crazy," Lance said after a long silence.

"It was," agreed Kitty. "It's been a long time since anyone's tried to kill me. Reminds me of high school."

_They were driving in his Jeep as Bayville twisted and reformed all around them. His eyes were glued to the road, knowing that if he took one glance at that damn skirt he probably wouldn't be able to look away._

_She laughed at one of his lame jokes during physics, leading McCoy to inquire, "Any problems back there, you two?" Lance shook his head but the grin didn't go so easily, and neither did the temporary lightheadedness._

_The last bell rung and he waited for the rest of the class to dart out the door before lazily making his way out of the room. She was waiting for him at his locker, eyes alight and lips dark pink._

_Her dress lay somewhere in the corner of his room, his boxers somewhere in a heap with his suit. As his head rested on her bare shoulder, gleaming with sweat, Lance silently thanked the rest of the guys for going to that after-prom party and getting wasted enough not to make it back home._

"I know you won't be able to believe this, but I miss high school," Lance said.

Kitty's face belied her surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, I know we were being used by Magneto and Mystique – and, I know you'll hate this, but Xavier some, too – but it was so much different. It was easier. Everything…" He looked to the salt then the pepper then the paprika. He remembered setting the table for parents that never came home. "I didn't like my childhood much, but man, high school… I hated school, but I actually met some pretty cool friends, not like back in Northbrook where it was me and guys that helped me steal stuff. Don't tell Todd or Pietro, but we've actually had some really great times."

"I'm _so_ telling both of them."

"Great," he muttered, but he still smiled. "We had all that shit going on, mutants versus mutants and then mutants versus Apocalypse and everything, but it wasn't like this. I like my job, but it's just so damn serious. Back then, nothing was that serious. Remember when I got on top of the bleachers at that soccer game and told everyone we were mutants?"

"Yeah, that wasn't your best idea," Kitty laughed.

"Of course not! I was a dumbass high school senior, but it was great! It was… I don't know. Less pressure. Something."

"It was more innocent," Kitty finished for him. "Riding around with your friends, watching Evan skateboard or Jean play soccer or Bobby just be a doofus. Having snowball fights."

"Yeah, that stuff. It was just different."

Kitty leaned forward and he could smell her perfume. Vanilla? Strawberry? "Is there anything else you miss about high school?"

"Sorry I'm late, do you have your orders ready?"

Kitty drew back and smiled primly at the waiter. "Oh, stay right there, I'm sure we can work this out. What do you say, Lance?"

"All veggie?" he suggested, deliberately testing her.

"Hm, no," she said, and her eyes told him that she'd known it was a test. "Last time we had that you didn't really like it very much. How about half veggie and half meat lovers, medium crust?"

"That's actually a very common order," replied the waiter, grinning. He set off to go back to the kitchen.

"I hope you don't mind the smell of the meat," said Lance.

"I don't." Kitty smiled at him. "We both like it differently. It's cool."

"I guess." The plastic covering of the booth squeaked when he shifted his weight. "This place doesn't let you fill up your own fountain drink or go up to order your food. Stuff's different than in Bayville."

"Different doesn't mean worse. Although I do miss Bayville, yeah."

"So do I." At her expression, he elaborated, "Well, I live there and all, but I'm pretty much on the move all the time for work, and when I am home I'm usually sleeping in the house or too tired to go out and do anything. It's not like high school."

"You really do miss high school," Kitty mused.

"I do." He took a long gulp of his water – wishing it was alcohol, as his courage had vanished – and sighed. "Okay, don't tell anyone about this, but I've kind of got a plan for the future."

Kitty pretended to be shocked. "Who are you and what have you done with Lance Alvers? First you're early and now you're thinking about the future?"

"Shut up, Pryde," he mumbled, grinning. "Anyways. Like I was saying. I've been thinking… I know I wasn't the best student and all, but I actually do like high schoolers, right? I like kids that understand the world but aren't so – so corrupted by it yet. Yeah. Well, I've been thinking the past month or so that maybe, when I get some time, I'd like to go finish my GED, get that out of the way. Then, in a couple of years, I might go to the community college, get my basics out of the way, and from there… well, I don't know. I don't think I'm really cut out to be a teacher, really, but there are some subjects I liked. English wasn't half bad, and science is kind of cool when you talk about the Earth and stuff – obviously I'd like that. Maybe I wouldn't want to be a teacher. Maybe something else. What I'm saying is, I've just been thinking, somewhere down the line I'd like to quit this S.H.I.E.L.D. superagent stuff and settle down, get my degree, and work with kids. I don't know how. I'll figure that out. It's a pipedream, but hey, a guy can dream, right?"

"Wow," murmured Kitty after the longest wait in Lance's life.

"That bad, huh?" he asked, grimacing.

"No, it's not bad at all!" she exclaimed, realizing he'd mistaken her intentions. "I mean, it's great, Lance! I think that's an awesome idea. It'll be hard and time-consuming, but I think – well, I think you probably can't do this S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff forever, and even if you could, it just seems to take such a toll on you – not you, I mean, everyone – oh, you know what I mean."

"You don't think it's totally stupid?"

"No!" She paused and smiled at her hands, unable to meet his eyes. He frowned. "You probably won't like this, but if you got your GED I bet Professor X would love to have you on staff while you worked at your degree. You'd get to work with kids without all the requirements and necessarily being a 'teacher,' but you'd also have time to go to school. And you'd be where the action is. I think you'd like that."

Lance wanted to vehemently deny this possibility, but the more he pondered it the more appealing it became. "I… I don't know. I'm not a big fan of Xavier's, but it would be a pretty ideal situation, wouldn't it? You have to understand, this is all _way_ down the line. I like my job right now, for the most part, but I just don't want to do this forever. I don't know. I'll think about it."

"Good! You should." She finally looked up at him, but her shyness was still evident, holding her back in some foreign way. "I've been missing the Institute a lot, actually."

"Yeah, well you're in college, aren't you?" he asked, and for the first time he didn't feel bitter when he said it. Somewhere during his great epiphany it had hit him that going to college must be just this for Kitty – a dream. The only difference was that she was living it. "You're doing what you want to do. I'm sure you'll get over it."

"I don't think I will." She straightened her back, a telltale sign that they were about to have a Serious Talk. "I've been thinking about it a lot. College is interesting and all, but I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing right now. I want to be back home, fighting for the mutant cause. I just feel really useless."

"You're not useless," Lance said, trying to console her. "You can do stuff in the summers and in four years, right?"

"It's not just nostalgia, Lance. What I'm telling you is that I'm coming back to Bayville."

He nearly knocked over his glass and spluttered: "What?"

"I've already discussed it with Professor X and my college counselor. I'm going to look into transferring into a school near Bayville so I can be part of the X-Men again."

Kitty had that fire in her eyes that told him that this was a decision she would not go back on. But still he needed to know one thing, and he knew there was no pussyfooting around it.

"You're not doing this for me, are you?" he asked bluntly.

"No," she said, without acting at all affronted. "I'm not."

"Good."

Her gaze made him feel nude. "Would you want me to say yes?"

"No. I want you to be happy. I've been a real dick, but I realize that now. I haven't handled this well, and it's time to grow up." He swallowed and grabbed his water. His throat was suddenly dry. "It's not… it's not that I don't care about you. I love that you're coming back. But it needs to be on your terms."

"I'm glad you said that." Her gaze only intensified. "Because there are some other things we need to discuss. I want to approach them on my terms."

Her hand found his.

"Our terms."

She squeezed his hand.

"I… I need to know if you're really coming back," Lance finally said.

"I am," Kitty replied.

"Then I'm ready," he said. "I know we're screwed up, but I'm ready. I want this."

"So do I," she said.

And that was that. There had been so many unspoken words that had separated them; it was only fitting that unspoken words would bring them back together.

Lance marveled at the warmth of her hand. Some things he never wanted to forget.

"Your pizza?"

They broke contact to let the waiter set the tray down on the table. Before the waiter could leave, Lance tapped him on the arm.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" When the waiter nodded, Lance leaned forward, grinning. "Is this place really the best pizzeria in Chicago?"

"The best in America," the waiter grinned back.

"Well, there's one in Bayville, New York, that's pretty damn good," Lance replied. His eyes flitted to Kitty. "We'll call you in a couple weeks to tell you if this place passed the test."

"I look forward to it, but I know that we'll win!"

The three laughed and the waiter went off. Kitty waited several moments before jutting her head out above the tray, a tantalizing foot from Lance's mouth.

"You sure you want to go back there?" she asked quietly. "We've got some bad memories."

"I'm not letting bad memories stop us any more," stated Lance. He grabbed both her hands in his, balancing them over the two-faced Italian pie. "I'm not letting _anything_ stop us any more."

"Anything?"

"Anything," Lance affirmed. "Nothing's ever gonna stand in our way again. Nothing, Pretty Kitty. Our lives, they're not anyone else's any more. We own them now. We own this."

_Once you own it, nothing can own you._

Kitty murmured, "You always had such a way with words."

"I bullshit my way through life," Lance said. He smiled. "Now we're bullshitting our way together."

"Together?" she asked.

"Together," he said. "We make our own rules now."

_This is the real you, isn't it?_

"We're not pawns any more. We're not going to stand down because we're told to, we're not going to screw up because we're both too chicken to admit we're wrong. We're in this for keeps. Together."

Kitty smirked at him and stole a quick kiss. As her lips left his, she quietly muttered in his ear, "Shut up and eat your pizza."

Lance laughed and kissed her back.

-


End file.
